Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
“ေရႊမဲ”ခြန္၏ အႏုပိုင္ညာ (၄)
(ဃ-ခ) အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္မွ်၀ီျခင္းနာင့္ ထပ္ခါတလဲေကာက္ခံျခင္း (ေျမာက္အေမရိက)
ေကာက္ခံရဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြကို မွ်၀ီစြာထက္စာေက ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕ကို လြဲႊေျပာင္းပီးျဗီးေက ေကာက္ခံခုိင္းစြာက ပိုေကာင္းသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိကို မွ်၀ီေရနိန္ရာမွာလည္း အခြန္တစ္မ်ိဳးတည္းကိုပ်ာယ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအဆင့္ဆင့္ႀကားမွာ ထပ္ခါတလဲေကာက္ခံလို႕ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ အခြန္နာေမတိ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးေျပာင္းျဗီးေကေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ေကာက္ခံႏုိင္သည္။ ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံနာင့္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုရို႕သည္ အထက္ေဖာ္ျပပါ စနစ္ကို သံုးဂတ္သည္။ ေယေကေလ့ ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံပံုစံက full decentralizationလို႕ေခၚေရ ဗဟိုဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မွဳလံုး၀နီးပါး ကင္းမဲ့ေရ စနစ္ကို သံုးသည္။
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု၏ ဖယ္ဒရယ္ဗဟိုအစိုးရသည္ ႏိုင္ငံဧရိယာ၏ ၃၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကို ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရပိုင္ျမီ (Federally owned land)အျဖစ္သတ္မွတ္ထားသည္။ ဥပမာ-အမ်ိဳးသားပန္းျခံ (National Parks)၊ အမ်ိဳးသားသစ္ေတာ(National Forests)၊ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ (ဖယ္ဒရယ္ျပစ္မွဳက်ဴးလြန္သူတိ၊ ၀ါရွင္တန္ဒီစီျမိဳ႕ထဲမွာ ျပစ္မွဳက်ဳးလြန္သူတိ စေရ အက်ဥ္းသားတိကုိ ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ထားေရ နိန္ရာ) စေရ နိန္ရာတိ ပါ၀င္သည္။ ယင္း ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရပိုင္နယ္ျမီတိက လဲြလို႕ တျခားနိန္ရာတိကို ယင္းရုိ႕၏ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ျပည္နယ္တိက ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည္။ ယင္းျပည္နယ္တိသည္ ဗဟိုအေျခခံဥပေဒအရ အခ်ဳပ္အျခာအာဏာပိုင္ ျပည္နယ္တိျဖစ္ေတအတြက္ ျပည္နယ္တစ္ခုက ထြက္ရွိေရ သယံဇာတ ပစၥည္းမွန္သမွ်ကို ယင္းျပည္နယ္က ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည္။ ဗဟိုအစိုးရနာင့္ ၀င္ေငြတိကိုေတာ့ မွ်၀ီေကာက္ခံဂတ္သည္။ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု၏ အေနာက္ေျမာက္အစြန္ဆံုးမွာ သယံဇာတေပါႀကြယ္ေရ အလက္စကာ ျပည္နယ္တည္ဟိသည္။ ယင္းျပည္နယ္မွာဆိုေက ျပည္နယ္အခြန္စုစုေပါင္း၏ ၅ပံု ၄ပံုကို ရီနံကပဲ ရရွိသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ယင္းျပည္နယ္၏ အခြန္ေကာက္ခံျခင္းနာင့္ဆိုင္ေရ လုပ္ပံုကိုင္ပံုတိသည္ စိတ္၀င္စားစရာ၊ ေလ့လာစရာ သာဓကတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည္။
အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္သည္ ရီနံအေပၚမွာ ပိုင္ဆိုင္ခြန္(Property tax)၊ ရီနံစည္ တစ္စည္စီမွာ ၁၂ ဒသမ ၂၅ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကနိန္ ၁၅ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းအထိ ေကာက္ခံတတ္ေတ နစ္နာေႀကး(Severance tax)၊ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး (Royalties)၊ အႏၱရာယ္ျဖစ္စီတတ္ေတ ပစၥၫ္း ေမွာက္က်စြာတိအတြက္ပါ ထည့္သြင္းေကာက္ခံထားေရ ထုတ္လုပ္ခြန္၊ ကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိ၏ ၀င္ေငြခြန္ စေရ အခြန္အမ်ိဳးအစားတိကို အမ်ားႀကီးေကာက္ခံသည္။ ကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိ၏ ၀င္ေငြခြန္ကိုေကာက္ခံေရ နိန္ရာမွာ ယင္းကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိ၏ တကမၻာလံုးက ရေရ ၀င္ေငြနာင့္ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္က ရေရ ၀င္ေငြ အခ်ိဳးအစားကို ႀကည့္ျပီးေက ေကာက္ခံသည္။ ယင္းပုိင္ေကာက္ခံေရနိန္ရာမွာ အခ်က္သံုးခ်က္ျဖစ္ေတ
၁။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္မွာ ဟိေရ ကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိက ထုတ္လုပ္လုိက္ေတ ရီနံနာင့္ ရီနံထြက္ပစၥၫ္း ေရာင္းေငြနာင့္ သြင္းကုန္ခြန္ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း၊
၂။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္က ထုတ္လုပ္လုိက္ေတ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း
၃။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္က ပိုင္ဆုိင္ေရ ပိုင္ဆိုင္ပစၥၫ္း ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းတိ
အေပၚမွာ အဓိက အေလးထား စုိင္းစားသည္။ ျပည္နယ္အစိုးရက ေကာက္ခံေရအခြန္နာင့္ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကးတိအေပၚမွာ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရက ထပ္ျပီးေက အခြန္ေကာက္ခြင့္မဟိစြာကို တြိရသည္။
အထက္ေဖာ္ျပပါစနစ္သည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို ရီနံခြန္နာင့္ ယင္းအခြန္ေငြတိ သံုးစဲြျခင္း၊ စုေဆာင္းျခင္းနာင့္ ပတ္သတ္ျပီးေက အျပည့္အ၀ အာဏာပီးအပ္ထားသည္။ ပီးအပ္ထားေရ အာဏာကိုလည္း ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက တာ၀န္သိသိ လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္ရန္ စီမံထားသည္။ မလုပ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္က ေဒသခံအစိုးရဘားမွာ အျပစ္ပံုက်သည္။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္မွာလည္း ရီနံခြန္ထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို ေနာက္မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္တိအတြက္ ပေဒသာပင္အျဖစ္ စုိက္ထူထားဟိစြာကို တြိရသည္။ The Alaska Permanent Fund လို႕ေခၚေရ အလက္စကာအျမဲတမ္းပေဒသာပင္ကို ၁၉၇၆ ခုႏွစ္မွာ စတင္ထူေထာင္ခသည္။ ေဒသရီနံခြန္၏ ၅ ပံု ၁ ပံုေလာက္ကို ယင္းပေဒသာပင္ထဲကို ထည့္သြင္းစီျပီးေက ယင္းအထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေဒသခံျပည္သူတိဘားကို ႏွစ္စုိင္ အက်ိဳးအျမတ္အျဖစ္ ခဲြေ၀ပီးသည္။ ၂၀၀၁ ႏွစ္ကုန္စာရင္းအရ ယင္းပေဒသာပင္ထဲမွာ ေဒၚလာဘီလီယံ ၂၅ နီးပါးဟိနိန္သည္ဟု သိရသည္။ (အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ရီနံအမ်ားႀကီးထြက္ေတ ျပည္နယ္တစ္ခုျဖစ္ေတ တကၠဆက္(Texas)မွာ ဆိုေကလည္း Permanent University Fund (PUF)လို႕ေခၚေရ အျမဲတမ္းတကၠသိုလ္ရံပံုေငြ ကို ထားဟိျပီးေက ယင္းျပည္နယ္ထဲက တကၠသိုလ္တိကို ေထာက္ပံ့ထားစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ေထာက္ပံ့ထားလို႕ ေဒသခံျပည္နယ္သားတိအေနနာင့္ အဆင့္ျမင့္ပညာေရးကို စ်ီးႏွဳန္းသက္သက္သာသာနာင့္ တက္ႏိုင္စြာကို တြိရသည္။ ယင္းျပည္နယ္က Texas A & M University at College Stationနာင့္ University of Texas at Austin ရို႕သည္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု၏ ထိပ္တန္း ရီနံအင္ဂ်င္နီယာ(Petroleum Engineering)တကၠသိုလ္တိျဖစ္သည္။)
ကေနဒါ
ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံမွာဆိုေက သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္ခြန္တိ (မ်ားေသာအားျဖင္း ရီနံဆီခြန္)ကုိ ေဒသခံျပည္နယ္အစိုးရတိက ေကာက္ခံခြင့္ဟိသည္။ အခြန္အမ်ိဳးအစားတိခြဲျပီးေက ေကာက္ခံထားသည္။ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကးကိုလည္း ေကာက္ခံသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ရီနံထြက္ေရ ေဒသတခ်ိဳ႕သည္ ရီနံခြန္အမ်ားစုကို ေကာက္ခံရဟိသည္။ ႏိုင္ငံ၏ အယ္ဘာတာ(Alberta)တုိင္းဆိုေက သဘာ၀ပစၥၫ္းတိ ေပါႀကြယ္၀လွသည္။ တစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးရီနံခြန္၏ ေလးပံုတစ္ပံုကို ယင္းတိုင္းတစ္ခုတည္းက ေကာက္ခံရဟိသည္။ ဆက္ဆကတ္ခ်ီ၀န္(Saskatchewan)တိုင္းဆိုေကလည္း တစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးရီနံခြန္၏ ၁၀ ပံု ၁ ပံုကို ေကာက္ခံရဟိသည္။ ေယေကေလ့ အားလံုးကို ျခံဳငံုႀကည့္လုိက္ေက ရီနံခြန္သည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိ၀င္ေငြ၏ ၃ ဒသမ ၅၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကိုရာ ကိုယ္စားျပဳသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိအနိန္နာင့္ မိမိေဒသထြက္ရီနံက ရီနံခြန္တိကို ပိုရေကေလ့ တျခားဗဟိုအစိုးရက ပီးအပ္ေတ ေထာက္ပံ့ေႀကး(grants)တိကိုက်ေက အရနည္းသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက တုိင္းအသီးသီး၏၀င္ေငြ မွ်တေအာင္ ႀကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္ညွိပီးသည္။
အျခားတဘက္မွာ ေအပိုင္ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕တိအေပၚမွာ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကးေကာက္ခံျခင္း၊ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိအေပၚမွာ အျပည့္အ၀ အာဏာခဲြ၀ီပီးျခင္းတိေရ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းရပ္တိအေပၚမွာ အခြန္ အလြန္အကြ်ံေကာက္ခံျခင္းတိကို ျဖစ္ေပၚစီႏိုင္သည္။ ယင္း၏အက်ိဳးဆက္အျဖစ္ မိမိေဒသသို႕ ေရာက္ဟိလာဖို႕ ရင္းႏွီးျမွဳပ္ႏွံမွဳတိကို နည္းပါးစီႏိုင္သည္။ ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိက ၀င္ေငြခြန္နာင့္ ေရာင္းကုန္ခြန္တိကုိ ေလွ်ာ့ခ်ေကာက္ခံျခင္းျဖင့္ တျခားျပည္နယ္တိက လူတိ ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိုင္းတိကို ေျပာင္းေရြ႕နိန္ထုိင္လာႏိုင္သည္။ ယင္းအက်ိဳးဆက္အျဖစ္ တျခားျပည္နယ္တိမွာ အခြန္ရဟိမွဳ နည္းပါးျခင္းျပႆနာတိကို ျဖစ္ေပၚစီႏိုင္သည္။ ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံ၏ စီးပြားေရး ပညာရွင္တိက တိုင္းေဒသမွာဟိေရ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္က ရဟိေရ အခြန္တိကို ဗဟိုအစိုးရပါးကို လႊဲေျပာင္းထားခ်င္ကတ္သည္။ ေယေကေလ့ အေျခခံဥပေဒက တုိင္းေဒသတိကို ပီးအပ္ထားေရ အေျခခံအခြင့္အေရးတိနာင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဆိုင္ရာ ကန္႕သတ္ခ်က္တိ ဟိနိန္ေရအတြက္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရပါးကို အခြန္ေငြတိ ပီးအပ္ထားဖို႕ဆိုေရ ကိစၥမွာ ေလာေလာဆယ္ ျဖစ္ႏုိင္ဖြယ္မဟိစြာကို တြိရသည္။
ကေနဒါႏုိင္ငံနာင့္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုရို႕သည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို ရီနံခြန္ေကာက္ခံခြင္အာဏာအျပည့္အ၀ပီးထားသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ပီးထားျခင္းေႀကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာႏိုင္ေရ အခက္အခဲျပႆနာတိ နည္းႏိုင္သမွ်နည္းေအာင္လည္း ႀကိဳးစားကာကြယ္ထားစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ဥပမာ- ယင္းႏိုင္ငံတိက ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ျပည္နယ္၊တုိင္းတိသည္ ရီနံခြန္တိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို ပေဒသာပင္အျဖစ္ သတ္သတ္ထားဟိျပီးေက အစိုးရတိက အလြန္အကြ်ံဖဲ့ခ်ာမသံုးစဲြႏုိင္ေအာင္ စီမံထားသည္။ ယင္းပုိင္လုပ္ထားျခင္းေႀကာင့္ ရီနံစ်ီးအတက္အက်ေႀကာင့္ ရိုက္ခတ္လာႏိုင္ေရ အခြန္ေငြ အတိုးအေလ်ာ့ ျပႆနာတိကိုလည္း ကာကြယ္ပီးထားျပီးသားျဖစ္နိန္သည္။ ယင္းအျပင္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိကို တျခားေထာက္ပံ့ေႀကးပီးျခင္းတိကို ကန္႕သတ္ထားသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ တိုင္း၊ ျပည္နယ္တိႀကားမွာ အခြန္ေငြ မမွ်မတျဖစ္မွဳကို အတတ္ႏိုင္ဆံုး ညွိပီးထားသည္။ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရ၏ အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိအေပၚမွာ ျပည္နယ္အစိုးရအသီးသီးက မိမိျပည္နယ္သူျပည္နယ္သားတိ ပီးအပ္ရဖို႕ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အခြန္ႏွဳန္းထားတိကို သတ္မွတ္ပီးႏုိင္ျခင္းျဖင့္ ပိုမိုတည္ျငိမ္မွဳဟိေရ ေဒသအခြန္ေငြပမာဏကို ပိုင္ဆုိင္ႏုိင္ေအာင္လည္း စီမံထားေပသည္။
အထက္ေဖာ္ျပပါ ႏိုင္ငံအားလံုးကို ေလ့လာျခင္းျဖင့္ ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္ေပါႀကြယ္ေရ ေဒသက ံျပည္သူတိေရ မိမိေဒသက ထြက္ဟိေရ သယံဇာတ၏ အသီးအျမစ္ကို အနည္းနာင့္အမ်ား ခံစားခြင့္ဟိသည္ကို တြိရသည္။ သဘာ၀သယံဇာတပစၥၫ္းမ်ားကို ယွာေဖြခြင့္ပီးစြာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ျမီျပင္ယွာေဖြေလ့လာမွဳတိ ျပဳလုပ္ေတ နိန္ရာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ တူးေဖာ္စြာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ေရာင္းခ်ရာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ အက်ိဳးအျမတ္တိခဲြေ၀ဖို႕ ဆံုးျဖတ္ရာ စကား၀ုိင္းမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း အနည္းနာင့္အမ်ား ပါ၀င္ခြင့္ ဟိႀကသည္။ ယင္းႏိုင္ငံမ်ားနာင့္ ဆန္႕က်င္ျပီးေက ဗမာစစ္အစိုးရသည္ ရခုိင္ျပည္မွ ထြက္ဟိေရ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္တိကို မည္သည့္ ရခုိင္ျပည္သူ၊ ရခုိင္ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ပုဂၢိဳလ္၊ အဖဲြ႕အစည္း အလိုမပါပဲ ယင္းရို႕စိတ္ႀကိဳက္စီမံနိန္ကတ္စြာကို ရင္နာစရာ တြိဟိရသည္။ ျပည္ေထာင္စုစိတ္ကို အရင္းခံေရ စစ္မွန္ေရ ဖယ္ဒရယ္ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ကို တည္ေဆာက္ခ်င္ေက လက္ဟိအစိုးရ (သို႕) ေနာက္တက္လာဖို႕ အစိုးရတိသည္ ေအာက္ပါအခ်က္တိကို နားလည္အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ရန္ အေရးႀကီးသည္။
၁။ ရခုိင္ျပည္က သယံဇာတိကို ရခုိင္သားတိကရာ ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည္။ ယင္းကို ဗဟိုအေျခခံဥပေဒမွာ အတိအလင္း ေဖာ္ျပထားဖို႕ လိုသည္။
၂။ ရခုိင့္သယံဇာတတိအေပၚမွာ ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကရာ အခြန္ေကာက္ခံခြင့္ဟိသည္။
၃။ ထြက္ဟိေရ သယံဇာတတိကို ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကရာ ေရာင္းခ်ခြင့္ ဟိသည္။
၃။ ရီနံတြင္းတူးလုပ္ငန္း၊ ထုတ္လုပ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္း၊ ပို႕ေဆာင္ေရးလုပ္ငန္း စေရ လုပ္ငန္းလုပ္ကိုင္ဖို႕အတြက္ လုိင္စင္ကို ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကရာ ထုတ္ပီးခြင့္ဟိသည္။ လုိင္စင္ခြန္နာင့္ အလုပ္သမား၀င္ေငြခြန္စေရ အခြန္တိကို ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကိုပီးေဆာင္ရမည္။ ဗဟိုအစိုးရကို အနည္းအက်ဥ္းပီးေဆာင္ျခင္းကိုလည္း နားလည္ပီးရမည္။
၄။ ရခုိင္ျပည္ကိုယ္စားျပဳအစိုးရကို ထြက္ဟိေရ သယံဇာတတိအေပၚမွာ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္ခြန္(natural resource taxes)နာင့္ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး (Royalties)တိ ပီးေဆာင္ရမည္။
၅။ ရဟိလာေရ အခြန္ေငြတိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို အတိုးႏွဳန္းပံုမွန္ ရႏုိင္ေရ saving fund တစ္ခုျပဳလုပ္ျပီးေက ေနာက္မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္တိအတြက္ စီမံထားရမည္။ ယင္း fundထဲက ဖဲ့ခ်ာကို ရီနံခြန္အတက္အက်ေႀကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာႏိုင္ေရ ဂယက္ရုိက္မွဳနာင့္ သက္ဆိုင္ေရ ကိစၥရပ္တိမွာရာ သံုးရမည္။ မည္သည့္သံုးစဲြမွဳကိုမဆို ရခုိင့္ပါလီမန္မွ မဲခဲြခြင့္ျပဳျပီးခါမွရာ သံုးစဲြဖို႕ဖဲ့ခ်ာကို ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရ ဘားဂ်တ္ထဲသို႕လႊဲေျပာင္းျပီးေက သံုးစဲြရမည္။
၆။ ရဟိေရ အခြန္တိကို လတ္တေလာ မဆင္မျခင္ မသံုးစဲြပဲ ေရရွည္လည္း ေကာင္းေအာင္၊ ႏုိင္ငံ၏ ေငြေႀကးေပၚလစီဆိုင္ရာ ဆိုးက်ိဳးတိကိုလည္း မျဖစ္ေအာင္ စနစ္တက်၊ ပါးပါးနပ္နပ္ သံုးစဲြရမည္။
၇။ ရဟိလာေရ အခြန္ေငြတိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို Education Fund တစ္ခုျပဳလုပ္ျပီးေက ပညာေရးကိစၥရပ္တိမွာ သံုးစဲြရမည္။ အဆင့္မွီတကၠသိုလ္တိ တည္ေဆာက္ျပီးေက ဆင္းရဲခ်မ္းသာမေရြး ရခုိင္ျပည္သူျပည္သားတိအတြက္ ပညာေရးကို စ်ီးေပါေပါနာင္တက္ေရာက္သင္ယူႏုိင္ေအာင္ စီမံထားရမည္။ ပညာေရးနာင့္ မသက္ဆိုင္ေသာ ကိစၥရပ္တိမွာ မသံုးစဲြရ။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရ ဘားဂ်တ္နာင့္ တတဲြတည္းထားေက ႏုိင္ငံေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး စေရ တျခား ဘားဂ်တ္အတက္အက်ရိုက္ခတ္မွဳကို ႀကံဳရႏိုင္ေရအတြက္ Education Fundကို သီးသန္႕ပညာေရးရံပံုေငြအျဖစ္ထားဟိလားရမည္။
၈။ အခြန္တိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ပ်က္စီးမွဳတိျဖစ္ေပၚေရ နိန္ရာတိအတြက္ ေလ်ာ္ေႀကးေငြအျဖစ္ သီးသန္႕ရန္ပံုေငြ တစ္ရပ္ထားရွိရမည္။
မွီျငမ္းခ်က္
1. Ahmad, Ehtisham.; Mottu, Eric.; Oil Revenue Assignments: Country Experiences and Issues, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2002/wp02203.pdf, accessed January 26, 2010.
2. Wikipedia, Niger Delta, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_delta, accessed January 26, 2010.
3. Niger Delta Congress, Understanding the Derivation Principle, http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/uarticles/understanding_the_derivation_pri.htm, accessed January 26, 2010.
4. Wikipedia, Value Added Tax, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax, accessed January 26, 2010.
5. History.com, Federally Owned Land by State, http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=227229, accessed January 28, 2010.
6. Federal Bureau of Prison, Protecting Society and Crime, http://www.bop.gov/, accessed January 28, 2010.
7. TSHA Online, Permanent University Fund, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/PP/khp2.html, accessed February 10, 2010.
8. Wikipedia, Alaska Permanent Fund, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund, accessed February 11, 2010.
9. Canada Maps, Detailed Saskatchewan Map,http://www.canada-maps.org/saskatchewan-map.htm, accessed February 11, 2010.
ဓာတ္ပံု။ ။ နိရဥၥရာ သတင္းဌာန၊ ဘင္းဂလားေဒ့ရွ္။
ေကာက္ခံရဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြကို မွ်၀ီစြာထက္စာေက ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕ကို လြဲႊေျပာင္းပီးျဗီးေက ေကာက္ခံခုိင္းစြာက ပိုေကာင္းသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိကို မွ်၀ီေရနိန္ရာမွာလည္း အခြန္တစ္မ်ိဳးတည္းကိုပ်ာယ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအဆင့္ဆင့္ႀကားမွာ ထပ္ခါတလဲေကာက္ခံလို႕ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ အခြန္နာေမတိ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးေျပာင္းျဗီးေကေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ေကာက္ခံႏုိင္သည္။ ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံနာင့္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုရို႕သည္ အထက္ေဖာ္ျပပါ စနစ္ကို သံုးဂတ္သည္။ ေယေကေလ့ ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံပံုစံက full decentralizationလို႕ေခၚေရ ဗဟိုဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မွဳလံုး၀နီးပါး ကင္းမဲ့ေရ စနစ္ကို သံုးသည္။
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု
အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု၏ ဖယ္ဒရယ္ဗဟိုအစိုးရသည္ ႏိုင္ငံဧရိယာ၏ ၃၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကို ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရပိုင္ျမီ (Federally owned land)အျဖစ္သတ္မွတ္ထားသည္။ ဥပမာ-အမ်ိဳးသားပန္းျခံ (National Parks)၊ အမ်ိဳးသားသစ္ေတာ(National Forests)၊ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ (ဖယ္ဒရယ္ျပစ္မွဳက်ဴးလြန္သူတိ၊ ၀ါရွင္တန္ဒီစီျမိဳ႕ထဲမွာ ျပစ္မွဳက်ဳးလြန္သူတိ စေရ အက်ဥ္းသားတိကုိ ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ထားေရ နိန္ရာ) စေရ နိန္ရာတိ ပါ၀င္သည္။ ယင္း ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရပိုင္နယ္ျမီတိက လဲြလို႕ တျခားနိန္ရာတိကို ယင္းရုိ႕၏ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ျပည္နယ္တိက ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည္။ ယင္းျပည္နယ္တိသည္ ဗဟိုအေျခခံဥပေဒအရ အခ်ဳပ္အျခာအာဏာပိုင္ ျပည္နယ္တိျဖစ္ေတအတြက္ ျပည္နယ္တစ္ခုက ထြက္ရွိေရ သယံဇာတ ပစၥည္းမွန္သမွ်ကို ယင္းျပည္နယ္က ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည္။ ဗဟိုအစိုးရနာင့္ ၀င္ေငြတိကိုေတာ့ မွ်၀ီေကာက္ခံဂတ္သည္။ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု၏ အေနာက္ေျမာက္အစြန္ဆံုးမွာ သယံဇာတေပါႀကြယ္ေရ အလက္စကာ ျပည္နယ္တည္ဟိသည္။ ယင္းျပည္နယ္မွာဆိုေက ျပည္နယ္အခြန္စုစုေပါင္း၏ ၅ပံု ၄ပံုကို ရီနံကပဲ ရရွိသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ယင္းျပည္နယ္၏ အခြန္ေကာက္ခံျခင္းနာင့္ဆိုင္ေရ လုပ္ပံုကိုင္ပံုတိသည္ စိတ္၀င္စားစရာ၊ ေလ့လာစရာ သာဓကတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည္။
အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္သည္ ရီနံအေပၚမွာ ပိုင္ဆိုင္ခြန္(Property tax)၊ ရီနံစည္ တစ္စည္စီမွာ ၁၂ ဒသမ ၂၅ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကနိန္ ၁၅ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းအထိ ေကာက္ခံတတ္ေတ နစ္နာေႀကး(Severance tax)၊ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး (Royalties)၊ အႏၱရာယ္ျဖစ္စီတတ္ေတ ပစၥၫ္း ေမွာက္က်စြာတိအတြက္ပါ ထည့္သြင္းေကာက္ခံထားေရ ထုတ္လုပ္ခြန္၊ ကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိ၏ ၀င္ေငြခြန္ စေရ အခြန္အမ်ိဳးအစားတိကို အမ်ားႀကီးေကာက္ခံသည္။ ကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိ၏ ၀င္ေငြခြန္ကိုေကာက္ခံေရ နိန္ရာမွာ ယင္းကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိ၏ တကမၻာလံုးက ရေရ ၀င္ေငြနာင့္ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္က ရေရ ၀င္ေငြ အခ်ိဳးအစားကို ႀကည့္ျပီးေက ေကာက္ခံသည္။ ယင္းပုိင္ေကာက္ခံေရနိန္ရာမွာ အခ်က္သံုးခ်က္ျဖစ္ေတ
၁။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္မွာ ဟိေရ ကုမၸဏီႀကီးတိက ထုတ္လုပ္လုိက္ေတ ရီနံနာင့္ ရီနံထြက္ပစၥၫ္း ေရာင္းေငြနာင့္ သြင္းကုန္ခြန္ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း၊
၂။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္က ထုတ္လုပ္လုိက္ေတ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း
၃။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္က ပိုင္ဆုိင္ေရ ပိုင္ဆိုင္ပစၥၫ္း ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းတိ
အေပၚမွာ အဓိက အေလးထား စုိင္းစားသည္။ ျပည္နယ္အစိုးရက ေကာက္ခံေရအခြန္နာင့္ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကးတိအေပၚမွာ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရက ထပ္ျပီးေက အခြန္ေကာက္ခြင့္မဟိစြာကို တြိရသည္။
အထက္ေဖာ္ျပပါစနစ္သည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို ရီနံခြန္နာင့္ ယင္းအခြန္ေငြတိ သံုးစဲြျခင္း၊ စုေဆာင္းျခင္းနာင့္ ပတ္သတ္ျပီးေက အျပည့္အ၀ အာဏာပီးအပ္ထားသည္။ ပီးအပ္ထားေရ အာဏာကိုလည္း ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက တာ၀န္သိသိ လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္ရန္ စီမံထားသည္။ မလုပ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္က ေဒသခံအစိုးရဘားမွာ အျပစ္ပံုက်သည္။ အလက္စကာျပည္နယ္မွာလည္း ရီနံခြန္ထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို ေနာက္မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္တိအတြက္ ပေဒသာပင္အျဖစ္ စုိက္ထူထားဟိစြာကို တြိရသည္။ The Alaska Permanent Fund လို႕ေခၚေရ အလက္စကာအျမဲတမ္းပေဒသာပင္ကို ၁၉၇၆ ခုႏွစ္မွာ စတင္ထူေထာင္ခသည္။ ေဒသရီနံခြန္၏ ၅ ပံု ၁ ပံုေလာက္ကို ယင္းပေဒသာပင္ထဲကို ထည့္သြင္းစီျပီးေက ယင္းအထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေဒသခံျပည္သူတိဘားကို ႏွစ္စုိင္ အက်ိဳးအျမတ္အျဖစ္ ခဲြေ၀ပီးသည္။ ၂၀၀၁ ႏွစ္ကုန္စာရင္းအရ ယင္းပေဒသာပင္ထဲမွာ ေဒၚလာဘီလီယံ ၂၅ နီးပါးဟိနိန္သည္ဟု သိရသည္။ (အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ရီနံအမ်ားႀကီးထြက္ေတ ျပည္နယ္တစ္ခုျဖစ္ေတ တကၠဆက္(Texas)မွာ ဆိုေကလည္း Permanent University Fund (PUF)လို႕ေခၚေရ အျမဲတမ္းတကၠသိုလ္ရံပံုေငြ ကို ထားဟိျပီးေက ယင္းျပည္နယ္ထဲက တကၠသိုလ္တိကို ေထာက္ပံ့ထားစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ေထာက္ပံ့ထားလို႕ ေဒသခံျပည္နယ္သားတိအေနနာင့္ အဆင့္ျမင့္ပညာေရးကို စ်ီးႏွဳန္းသက္သက္သာသာနာင့္ တက္ႏိုင္စြာကို တြိရသည္။ ယင္းျပည္နယ္က Texas A & M University at College Stationနာင့္ University of Texas at Austin ရို႕သည္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု၏ ထိပ္တန္း ရီနံအင္ဂ်င္နီယာ(Petroleum Engineering)တကၠသိုလ္တိျဖစ္သည္။)
ကေနဒါ
ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံမွာဆိုေက သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္ခြန္တိ (မ်ားေသာအားျဖင္း ရီနံဆီခြန္)ကုိ ေဒသခံျပည္နယ္အစိုးရတိက ေကာက္ခံခြင့္ဟိသည္။ အခြန္အမ်ိဳးအစားတိခြဲျပီးေက ေကာက္ခံထားသည္။ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကးကိုလည္း ေကာက္ခံသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ရီနံထြက္ေရ ေဒသတခ်ိဳ႕သည္ ရီနံခြန္အမ်ားစုကို ေကာက္ခံရဟိသည္။ ႏိုင္ငံ၏ အယ္ဘာတာ(Alberta)တုိင္းဆိုေက သဘာ၀ပစၥၫ္းတိ ေပါႀကြယ္၀လွသည္။ တစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးရီနံခြန္၏ ေလးပံုတစ္ပံုကို ယင္းတိုင္းတစ္ခုတည္းက ေကာက္ခံရဟိသည္။ ဆက္ဆကတ္ခ်ီ၀န္(Saskatchewan)တိုင္းဆိုေကလည္း တစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးရီနံခြန္၏ ၁၀ ပံု ၁ ပံုကို ေကာက္ခံရဟိသည္။ ေယေကေလ့ အားလံုးကို ျခံဳငံုႀကည့္လုိက္ေက ရီနံခြန္သည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိ၀င္ေငြ၏ ၃ ဒသမ ၅၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကိုရာ ကိုယ္စားျပဳသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိအနိန္နာင့္ မိမိေဒသထြက္ရီနံက ရီနံခြန္တိကို ပိုရေကေလ့ တျခားဗဟိုအစိုးရက ပီးအပ္ေတ ေထာက္ပံ့ေႀကး(grants)တိကိုက်ေက အရနည္းသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက တုိင္းအသီးသီး၏၀င္ေငြ မွ်တေအာင္ ႀကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္ညွိပီးသည္။
အျခားတဘက္မွာ ေအပိုင္ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕တိအေပၚမွာ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကးေကာက္ခံျခင္း၊ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိအေပၚမွာ အျပည့္အ၀ အာဏာခဲြ၀ီပီးျခင္းတိေရ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းရပ္တိအေပၚမွာ အခြန္ အလြန္အကြ်ံေကာက္ခံျခင္းတိကို ျဖစ္ေပၚစီႏိုင္သည္။ ယင္း၏အက်ိဳးဆက္အျဖစ္ မိမိေဒသသို႕ ေရာက္ဟိလာဖို႕ ရင္းႏွီးျမွဳပ္ႏွံမွဳတိကို နည္းပါးစီႏိုင္သည္။ ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိက ၀င္ေငြခြန္နာင့္ ေရာင္းကုန္ခြန္တိကုိ ေလွ်ာ့ခ်ေကာက္ခံျခင္းျဖင့္ တျခားျပည္နယ္တိက လူတိ ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိုင္းတိကို ေျပာင္းေရြ႕နိန္ထုိင္လာႏိုင္သည္။ ယင္းအက်ိဳးဆက္အျဖစ္ တျခားျပည္နယ္တိမွာ အခြန္ရဟိမွဳ နည္းပါးျခင္းျပႆနာတိကို ျဖစ္ေပၚစီႏိုင္သည္။ ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံ၏ စီးပြားေရး ပညာရွင္တိက တိုင္းေဒသမွာဟိေရ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္က ရဟိေရ အခြန္တိကို ဗဟိုအစိုးရပါးကို လႊဲေျပာင္းထားခ်င္ကတ္သည္။ ေယေကေလ့ အေျခခံဥပေဒက တုိင္းေဒသတိကို ပီးအပ္ထားေရ အေျခခံအခြင့္အေရးတိနာင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဆိုင္ရာ ကန္႕သတ္ခ်က္တိ ဟိနိန္ေရအတြက္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရပါးကို အခြန္ေငြတိ ပီးအပ္ထားဖို႕ဆိုေရ ကိစၥမွာ ေလာေလာဆယ္ ျဖစ္ႏုိင္ဖြယ္မဟိစြာကို တြိရသည္။
ကေနဒါႏုိင္ငံနာင့္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုရို႕သည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို ရီနံခြန္ေကာက္ခံခြင္အာဏာအျပည့္အ၀ပီးထားသည္။ ယင္းပိုင္ပီးထားျခင္းေႀကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာႏိုင္ေရ အခက္အခဲျပႆနာတိ နည္းႏိုင္သမွ်နည္းေအာင္လည္း ႀကိဳးစားကာကြယ္ထားစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ဥပမာ- ယင္းႏိုင္ငံတိက ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ျပည္နယ္၊တုိင္းတိသည္ ရီနံခြန္တိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို ပေဒသာပင္အျဖစ္ သတ္သတ္ထားဟိျပီးေက အစိုးရတိက အလြန္အကြ်ံဖဲ့ခ်ာမသံုးစဲြႏုိင္ေအာင္ စီမံထားသည္။ ယင္းပုိင္လုပ္ထားျခင္းေႀကာင့္ ရီနံစ်ီးအတက္အက်ေႀကာင့္ ရိုက္ခတ္လာႏိုင္ေရ အခြန္ေငြ အတိုးအေလ်ာ့ ျပႆနာတိကိုလည္း ကာကြယ္ပီးထားျပီးသားျဖစ္နိန္သည္။ ယင္းအျပင္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက ရီနံထြက္ဟိေရ ေဒသတိကို တျခားေထာက္ပံ့ေႀကးပီးျခင္းတိကို ကန္႕သတ္ထားသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ တိုင္း၊ ျပည္နယ္တိႀကားမွာ အခြန္ေငြ မမွ်မတျဖစ္မွဳကို အတတ္ႏိုင္ဆံုး ညွိပီးထားသည္။ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရ၏ အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိအေပၚမွာ ျပည္နယ္အစိုးရအသီးသီးက မိမိျပည္နယ္သူျပည္နယ္သားတိ ပီးအပ္ရဖို႕ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အခြန္ႏွဳန္းထားတိကို သတ္မွတ္ပီးႏုိင္ျခင္းျဖင့္ ပိုမိုတည္ျငိမ္မွဳဟိေရ ေဒသအခြန္ေငြပမာဏကို ပိုင္ဆုိင္ႏုိင္ေအာင္လည္း စီမံထားေပသည္။
အထက္ေဖာ္ျပပါ ႏိုင္ငံအားလံုးကို ေလ့လာျခင္းျဖင့္ ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္ေပါႀကြယ္ေရ ေဒသက ံျပည္သူတိေရ မိမိေဒသက ထြက္ဟိေရ သယံဇာတ၏ အသီးအျမစ္ကို အနည္းနာင့္အမ်ား ခံစားခြင့္ဟိသည္ကို တြိရသည္။ သဘာ၀သယံဇာတပစၥၫ္းမ်ားကို ယွာေဖြခြင့္ပီးစြာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ျမီျပင္ယွာေဖြေလ့လာမွဳတိ ျပဳလုပ္ေတ နိန္ရာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ တူးေဖာ္စြာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ေရာင္းခ်ရာမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ အက်ိဳးအျမတ္တိခဲြေ၀ဖို႕ ဆံုးျဖတ္ရာ စကား၀ုိင္းမွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း အနည္းနာင့္အမ်ား ပါ၀င္ခြင့္ ဟိႀကသည္။ ယင္းႏိုင္ငံမ်ားနာင့္ ဆန္႕က်င္ျပီးေက ဗမာစစ္အစိုးရသည္ ရခုိင္ျပည္မွ ထြက္ဟိေရ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္တိကို မည္သည့္ ရခုိင္ျပည္သူ၊ ရခုိင္ကိုယ္စားျပဳ ပုဂၢိဳလ္၊ အဖဲြ႕အစည္း အလိုမပါပဲ ယင္းရို႕စိတ္ႀကိဳက္စီမံနိန္ကတ္စြာကို ရင္နာစရာ တြိဟိရသည္။ ျပည္ေထာင္စုစိတ္ကို အရင္းခံေရ စစ္မွန္ေရ ဖယ္ဒရယ္ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ကို တည္ေဆာက္ခ်င္ေက လက္ဟိအစိုးရ (သို႕) ေနာက္တက္လာဖို႕ အစိုးရတိသည္ ေအာက္ပါအခ်က္တိကို နားလည္အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ရန္ အေရးႀကီးသည္။
၁။ ရခုိင္ျပည္က သယံဇာတိကို ရခုိင္သားတိကရာ ပိုင္ဆိုင္သည္။ ယင္းကို ဗဟိုအေျခခံဥပေဒမွာ အတိအလင္း ေဖာ္ျပထားဖို႕ လိုသည္။
၂။ ရခုိင့္သယံဇာတတိအေပၚမွာ ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကရာ အခြန္ေကာက္ခံခြင့္ဟိသည္။
၃။ ထြက္ဟိေရ သယံဇာတတိကို ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကရာ ေရာင္းခ်ခြင့္ ဟိသည္။
၃။ ရီနံတြင္းတူးလုပ္ငန္း၊ ထုတ္လုပ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္း၊ ပို႕ေဆာင္ေရးလုပ္ငန္း စေရ လုပ္ငန္းလုပ္ကိုင္ဖို႕အတြက္ လုိင္စင္ကို ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကရာ ထုတ္ပီးခြင့္ဟိသည္။ လုိင္စင္ခြန္နာင့္ အလုပ္သမား၀င္ေငြခြန္စေရ အခြန္တိကို ရခုိင္ျပည္သူတိကို ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရ ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရကိုပီးေဆာင္ရမည္။ ဗဟိုအစိုးရကို အနည္းအက်ဥ္းပီးေဆာင္ျခင္းကိုလည္း နားလည္ပီးရမည္။
၄။ ရခုိင္ျပည္ကိုယ္စားျပဳအစိုးရကို ထြက္ဟိေရ သယံဇာတတိအေပၚမွာ သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္ခြန္(natural resource taxes)နာင့္ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး (Royalties)တိ ပီးေဆာင္ရမည္။
၅။ ရဟိလာေရ အခြန္ေငြတိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို အတိုးႏွဳန္းပံုမွန္ ရႏုိင္ေရ saving fund တစ္ခုျပဳလုပ္ျပီးေက ေနာက္မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္တိအတြက္ စီမံထားရမည္။ ယင္း fundထဲက ဖဲ့ခ်ာကို ရီနံခြန္အတက္အက်ေႀကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာႏိုင္ေရ ဂယက္ရုိက္မွဳနာင့္ သက္ဆိုင္ေရ ကိစၥရပ္တိမွာရာ သံုးရမည္။ မည္သည့္သံုးစဲြမွဳကိုမဆို ရခုိင့္ပါလီမန္မွ မဲခဲြခြင့္ျပဳျပီးခါမွရာ သံုးစဲြဖို႕ဖဲ့ခ်ာကို ရခုိင္ျပည္အစိုးရ ဘားဂ်တ္ထဲသို႕လႊဲေျပာင္းျပီးေက သံုးစဲြရမည္။
၆။ ရဟိေရ အခြန္တိကို လတ္တေလာ မဆင္မျခင္ မသံုးစဲြပဲ ေရရွည္လည္း ေကာင္းေအာင္၊ ႏုိင္ငံ၏ ေငြေႀကးေပၚလစီဆိုင္ရာ ဆိုးက်ိဳးတိကိုလည္း မျဖစ္ေအာင္ စနစ္တက်၊ ပါးပါးနပ္နပ္ သံုးစဲြရမည္။
၇။ ရဟိလာေရ အခြန္ေငြတိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို Education Fund တစ္ခုျပဳလုပ္ျပီးေက ပညာေရးကိစၥရပ္တိမွာ သံုးစဲြရမည္။ အဆင့္မွီတကၠသိုလ္တိ တည္ေဆာက္ျပီးေက ဆင္းရဲခ်မ္းသာမေရြး ရခုိင္ျပည္သူျပည္သားတိအတြက္ ပညာေရးကို စ်ီးေပါေပါနာင္တက္ေရာက္သင္ယူႏုိင္ေအာင္ စီမံထားရမည္။ ပညာေရးနာင့္ မသက္ဆိုင္ေသာ ကိစၥရပ္တိမွာ မသံုးစဲြရ။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရ ဘားဂ်တ္နာင့္ တတဲြတည္းထားေက ႏုိင္ငံေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး စေရ တျခား ဘားဂ်တ္အတက္အက်ရိုက္ခတ္မွဳကို ႀကံဳရႏိုင္ေရအတြက္ Education Fundကို သီးသန္႕ပညာေရးရံပံုေငြအျဖစ္ထားဟိလားရမည္။
၈။ အခြန္တိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ပ်က္စီးမွဳတိျဖစ္ေပၚေရ နိန္ရာတိအတြက္ ေလ်ာ္ေႀကးေငြအျဖစ္ သီးသန္႕ရန္ပံုေငြ တစ္ရပ္ထားရွိရမည္။
မွီျငမ္းခ်က္
1. Ahmad, Ehtisham.; Mottu, Eric.; Oil Revenue Assignments: Country Experiences and Issues, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2002/wp02203.pdf
2. Wikipedia, Niger Delta, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_delta
3. Niger Delta Congress, Understanding the Derivation Principle, http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/uarticles/understanding_the_derivation_pri.htm
4. Wikipedia, Value Added Tax, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax
5. History.com, Federally Owned Land by State, http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=227229, accessed January 28, 2010.
6. Federal Bureau of Prison, Protecting Society and Crime, http://www.bop.gov/, accessed January 28, 2010.
7. TSHA Online, Permanent University Fund, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/PP/khp2.html, accessed February 10, 2010.
8. Wikipedia, Alaska Permanent Fund, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
9. Canada Maps, Detailed Saskatchewan Map,
ဓာတ္ပံု။ ။ နိရဥၥရာ သတင္းဌာန၊ ဘင္းဂလားေဒ့ရွ္။
Sunday, January 24, 2010
“ေရႊမဲ”ခြန္၏ အႏုပိုင္ညာ (၃)
(ဃ)ဖယ္ဒရယ္ျပည္ေထာင္စုတိ
ဖယ္ဒရယ္ျပည္ေထာင္စုတိ အမ်ားစုသည္ ေကာက္ခံရဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြ မွ်၀ီျခင္း (သို႕) အခြန္ေကာက္ခံနိန္ရာ မွ်၀ီျခင္း စေရ ပံုစံတစ္မ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးကို သံုးဂတ္သည္။ အခြန္ေငြ မွ်၀ီျခင္းပံုစံမွာ အခြန္ေငြကို ဗဟိုအစိုးရက ေကာက္ခံျပီးေက (ယူေအအီးျပည္ေထာင္စုမွာဆိုေက ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက ေကာက္ခံသည္။) တျခားအစိုးရအဆင့္ဆင့္ဘားကို သတ္မွတ္ထားေရ ဥပေဒအရေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ပံုေသနည္းသံုးျပီးေက တြက္ခ်က္ျပီးေကေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ျပန္လည္၀ီမွ်ပီးျခင္းကို ဆိုလိုသည္။ အခြန္ေကာက္ခံနိန္ရာ မွ်၀ီျခင္းပံုစံမွာ ဆိုေက အခြန္ေကာက္ခံေရနိန္ရာတိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက တာ၀န္ယူေကာက္ပီးစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ေကာက္ေတအခြန္အမ်ိဳးအစားတိထဲက တခ်ိဳ႕တိကို အခြန္နာေမတစ္ခုတည္း ေအာက္မွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ နာေမအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးေအာက္မွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ထားျပီးေက ေကာက္ခံဂတ္သည္။
(ဃ-က) အခြန္ေငြ မွ်၀ီျခင္း
အခြန္ေငြမွ်၀ီျခင္း ပံုစံအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးရွိသည္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ႏိုင္ငံတိက အစိုးရ၏ ပံုမွန္ေငြေႀကးလႊဲေျပာင္းနိန္က်ပံုစံ(ဗဟိုအစိုးရကနိန္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို ပံုမွန္ဖဲ့ခ်ာ လႊဲပီးတတ္ေတ ပံုစံ)အတုိင္း ရီနံခြန္ကို မွ်၀ီျပီးေက တခ်ိဳ႕ကလည္း သီးျခားပံုေသနည္းတိ သံုးျပီးေက တြက္ခ်က္မွ်၀ီဂတ္သည္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ကလည္း Derivation Principleလို႕ေခၚေရ ေဒသတစ္ခု၏အခြန္ရွယ္ယာသည္ ယင္းေဒသက ေကာက္ခံရဟိေရ အခြန္ပမာဏအေပၚမူတည္ရမည္ ဆိုေရ ပံုစံကို သံုးဂတ္သည္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ပံုစံတိက လူဦးေရ၊ လိုအပ္ခ်က္၊ အခြန္ေကာက္ခံႏိုင္မွဳစြမ္းအား တိကို ထည့္သြင္းစုိင္းစားျပီးေက မွ်၀ီဂတ္သည္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ပံုစံတိက ရဟိေရ ရီနံခြန္အမ်ားအျပားကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို ပီးျပီးေက တခ်ိဳ႕ကလည္း အနည္းေခ်ရာ ပီးစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ယင္းပုိင္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို အမ်ားႀကီးပီးေရ ေဒသတိကေတာ့ ႏုိင္ဂ်ီးရီးယား၊ ရရွား၊ ကိုလံဘီယာနာင့္ ဗင္နီဇြဲလားရို႕ပိုင္ ႏိုင္ငံတိျဖစ္သည္။ အနည္းေခ်ရာပီးတတ္ေရ ႏိုင္ငံတိကေတာ့ အက္ေကြေဒါ၊ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား နာင့္ မက္စီကိုရို႕ပိုင္ ႏိုင္ငံတိျဖစ္သည္။
ယင္းပိုင္ အခြန္ေငြ၀ီမွ်ျခင္း၏ အားသာခ်က္တစ္ခုက ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို ဖဲ့ခ်ာလႊဲေျပာင္းရစြာ လြယ္ကူျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ရီနံခြန္က အဓိက အစိုးရအခြန္ေတာ္ေငြ ျဖစ္နိန္ေက ပိုေတာင္လြယ္သည္။ ယင္းပိုင္အခြန္ေငြမွ်၀ီျခင္းသည္ ရီနံခြန္အေပၚမွာ ဗဟိုက ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မွဳတိကို နည္းပါးစီသည္။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို ဖဲ့ခ်ာတိ၊ လိုအပ္ခ်က္တိ ျပန္လည္ျဖန္႕ျဖဴးပီးဖို႕ နည္းလမ္းတစ္ခု ျဖစ္လားခသည္။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိအႀကားမွာ ညီညီမွ်မွ်ျဖစ္ေအာင္ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ေဒသတခ်ိဳ႕မွာ အထူးလုိအပ္ခ်က္တိ ဟိလာခေကေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း မွ်၀ီပံု မွ်၀ီနည္းကို အတိုးအေလ်ာ့ ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္သည္။
ရီနံခြန္မွ်၀ီျခင္း၏ အားနည္းခ်က္တိကေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံ့စီးပြားေရး စီမံခန္႕ခဲြမွဳက႑တိနာင့္ ေငြေႀကးေပၚလစီတိကို အေႏွာက္အေယွာက္ ျဖစ္စီျခင္းပင္ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းအျပင္ အခြန္ေငြမွ်၀ီျခင္းသည္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးဆိုင္ရာ အျငင္းပြားစရာတိ မ်ားျပီးေက တည္ျငိမ္မွဳကင္းမဲ့တတ္သည္။
အထက္မွာေဖာ္ျပခေရပိုင္ အခြန္မွ်၀ီျခင္း (Revenue Sharing)ကိုမသံုးခ်င္ေက Assigning Revenue Basesလို႕ေခၚေရ အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို ေကာက္ခံခြင့္ပီးေရ ပံုစံကိုလည္း သံုးႏုိင္သည္။ ဥပမာ-မိမိေဒသက ထုတ္လုပ္ေတ လုပ္ငန္းတိအေပၚမွာ ေကာက္ေတအခြန္(Production Excises)ပိုင္ အခြန္မ်ိဳးကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို ေကာက္ခြင့္ပီးျခင္းမ်ိဳး ျဖစ္သည္။ ရီနံစ်ီးအေပၚမွာ အခြန္ေကာက္စြာထက္ ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းေပၚမွာ အခြန္ေကာက္စြာက ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိအတြက္ ပိုတည္ျငိမ္ေရ အခြန္၀င္ေငြကို ရဟိစီဖို႕ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းပုိင္ေကာက္ခံေက ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေရး ကုမၸဏီတိက သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ဆုိင္ရာ ထိခုိက္ပ်က္စီးမွဳတိကို က်ဴးလြန္မိခေက (မေတာ္တဆပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္) ယင္းကုမၸဏီတိပါးက ေလ်ာ္ေႀကးလည္း ေတာင္းႏုိင္ဖို႕ျဖစ္သည္။ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုနာင့္ ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံရို႕မွာဆိုေက ယင္းပိုင္ ပံုစံမ်ိဳးလုပ္ထားစြာကို တြိရသည္။
မက္စီကို (ရီနံခြန္ကို ကန္႕သတ္မွ်၀ီျခင္း)
မက္စီကိုႏိုင္ငံမွာဆိုေက ရီနံခြန္သည္ ျပည္သူပိုင္လုပ္ငန္းတိ၏ အခြန္ရွယ္ယာ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကို ကုိယ္စားျပဳထားသည္။ ၁၉၉၇-၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္စာရင္းတိအရ သံုးပံုတစ္ပံုနီးပါးခန္႕ ရွိသည္။ ရီနံတူးခြင့္(Extraction Rights)ကို ငွားလို႕ရေရ ဖဲ့ခ်ာ၊ အပိုရွိနိန္ေရ ရီနံကို ေရာင္းလို႕ရလာေရ ဖဲ့ခ်ာ နာင့္ အစိုးရပိုင္ ရီနံကုမၸဏီ၏ အသားတင္၀င္ေငြတိ အားလံုးေပါင္းသည္ ႏုိင္ငံGDP၏ ၅ ဒသမ ၃ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းနာင့္ ညီမွ်နိန္စြာကို တြိရသည္။
ရီနံခြန္အမ်ားစုသည္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရလက္ထဲကို လားေကေလ့ တခ်ိဳ႕အနည္းစုကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိဘားကို ဥပေဒျပဌာန္းခ်က္တိနာင့္အညီ ပီးအပ္စြာကိုတြိရသည္။ ရီနံတူးခြင့္လိုင္စင္အျဖစ္ရဟိေရ ဖဲ့ခ်ာ၏ ၂၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကို ဗဟိုအစုိးရေအာက္မွာဟိေရ အစိုးရေခ်တိအတြက္ အေထြေထြေငြပေဒသာပင္ထဲကို ထည့္ပီးထားသည္။ ယင္းပေဒသာပင္ထဲကမွ ေဒသခံအစိုးရေခ်တိက သူ႕ေဒသအသီးသီးအလုိက္ အနည္းအမ်ား ရဟိဂတ္သည္။ ရီနံတူးခြင့္လုိင္စင္အျဖစ္ရေရ ဖဲ့သာ၏ ေနာက္ထပ္ ၃ ဒသမ ၁၇ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကိုေတာ့ ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေတေဒသ (သို႕) ရီနံကို ျပည္ပတင္ပို႕ရာေဒသရို႕က ျမဴနီစပယ္ အစိုးရတိကို ရီနံတူးျခင္း၊ ရီနံတင္ပို႕ေရာင္းခ်ျခင္းတိေႀကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚႏုိင္ေရ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ပ်က္စီးမွဳတိအတြက္ ေလ်ာ္ေႀကးပီးသည္။
မက္စီကိုႏုိင္ငံမွာ ရီနံခြန္မွ်၀ီျခင္းနာင့္ ပတ္သက္ျပီးေက လြန္ခေရ ႏွစ္တိမွာ အျငင္းပြားမွဳတိ မဟိသေလာက္နည္းပါးစြာကို တြိရသည္။ အေႀကာင္းမွာ ရဟိလာေရ အခြန္တိကို လမ္းေႀကာင္းအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးကနိန္ ျမင္သာထင္သာဟိေရ ပံုေသနည္း (Transparent Formula)တိသံုးျပီးေက မွ်၀ီျဖန္႕ျဖဴးပီးနိန္လို႕ျဖစ္သည္။ ျမဴနီစပယ္အစိုးရတိကို ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ျခင္း၊ ျပည္ပတင္ပို႕ျခင္းနာင့္ ပတ္သက္ျပီးေက အခြန္တဖဲ့ေခ်ကို တိုက္ရိုက္ပီးစြာကလဲြလို႕ ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေတ ေဒသခံအစိုးရနာင့္ အေထြေထြရီနံခြန္ မွ်၀ီျခင္းတိပံုစံႀကားမွာ တုိက္ရိုက္ပတ္သတ္မွဳတိ မရွိစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ယင္းအျပင္ ရီနံခြန္သည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိ၏ အခြန္ေငြ အနည္းအက်ဥ္းကိုရာ ကိုယ္စားျပဳေရအတြက္နာင့္ အထက္ေဖာ္ျပပါရီနံခြန္မွ်၀ီျခင္းစနစ္ေရ ဗဟိုအစိုးရ၏ ႏုိင္ငံေငြေႀကးေပၚလစီတိကို မတည္ျငိမ္မွဳ ျဖစ္ေပၚျခင္း မရွိစြာကို ေလ့လာသိရွိရပါသည္။
ႏိုင္ဂ်ီးရီးယား
ရီနံေရ ႏိုင္ဂ်ီးရီးယားႏိုင္ငံ၏ အဓိက၀င္ေငြျဖစ္သည္။ ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္စာရင္းတိအရ အစိုးရအခြန္ေငြစုစုေပါင္း၏ ၈၂ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကို ရီနံက ရရွိပါသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံGDP၏ ၄၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းနာင့္ ညီမွ်သည္။ ၁၉၉၉ ခုႏွစ္ အေျခခံဥပေဒက အခြန္ေကာက္ခံမွဳနာင့္ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္မွဳတိကို ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရလက္ထဲကို လႊဲေျပာင္းပီးထားျပီးေက ကမ္းထက္ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေရးက ေကာက္ခံရရွိေရ ရီနံခြန္၏ အသားတင္ ၁၃ ရာခိုင္ႏွဳန္းကို ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေတ ေဒသတိကို လႊဲပီးထားစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ဗဟိုဖယ္ဒရယ္ အစိုးရက First Chargesလို႕ဆိုျပီးေက ဗဟိုအစိုးရအတြက္ အခြန္တခ်ိဳ႕တ၀က္ကို ယူျပီးလို႕က်န္စြာ အခြန္တိကို ျပည္နယ္နာင့္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရေခ်တိႀကားမွာ ပါလီမန္က ဆံုးျဖတ္ေတ ပံုေသနည္းအတိုင္း တြက္ခ်က္ခဲြယူဂတ္သည္။ ယင္းပံုေသနည္းကို ၅ ႏွစ္တစ္ခါစီ ျပန္ေျပာင္းသံုးသပ္ျပီးေက ပံုေသနည္းကို ေျပာင္းသင့္မေျပာင္းသင့္ ဆံုးျဖတ္ဂတ္သည္။ ေျပာင္းသင့္က ေျပာင္းလဲသည္။ အစိုးရအသံုးစရိတ္ဘားဂ်တ္ကိုပယ္လို႕ က်န္ေရအခြန္ေငြတိကို အထက္မွာေဖာ္ျပခေရနည္းအတိုင္းပ်ာယ္ ရီနံထြက္ေရ ေဒသတိကို ၁၃ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္း ပီးပနာ က်န္စြာကို တျခားျပည္နယ္နာင့္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရေခ်တိကို ျပန္ျပီးေက ၀ီမွ်ပီးသည္။
ပံုေသနည္းကို အစိုးရဘားဂ်တ္အစီရင္ခံစာတိမွာပါေရ ခန္႕မွန္းေျခ ရီနံစ်ီးႏွဳန္းအေပၚမွာ မူတည္ျပီးေက ျပဳလုပ္သည္။ တကယ္လို႕ ရီနံစ်ီးေရ အယင္ခန္႕မွန္းခေရစ်ီးထက္ မ်ားနိန္လို႕ အခြန္ေငြလည္း ခန္႕မွန္းေျခထက္ ပိုရေက ပိုရေရအခြန္ေငြတိကို အစိုးရတိႀကားမွာ ၀ီမွ်ပီးတတ္သည္။ ၀ီမွ်မပီးေကေတာင္မွ ေနာင္လာဖို႕ ႏွစ္တိမွာ သံုးဖို႕ စုထားပီးတတ္သည္။ ရီနံစ်ီးက ခန္႕မွန္းထားစြာထက္ နည္းနိန္ေကလည္း ရသင့္ေရဖဲ့ခ်ာ ပမာဏကို ျဖန္႕၀ီပီးသည္။
ျပည္နယ္နာင့္ေဒသခံျမိဳ႕၊ ရြာအစိုးရတိသည္ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရ၏ အခြန္ေငြမွ်၀ီျခင္းအစီအစိုင္တိေပၚမွာ အမ်ားႀကီးမွီခုိနိန္ဂတ္ရသည္။ ၁၉၉၉ ခုႏွစ္စာရင္းအရ Value Added Tax (VAT)ပိုင္ အခြန္တိအပါအ၀င္ ျပည္နယ္အစိုးရ ရဟိေရ အခြန္၀င္ေငြ စုစုေပါင္း၏ ၇၅ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းသည္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရ၏ အခြန္ေငြမွ်၀ီျခင္းက ရဟိျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ေဒသခံ ျမိဳ႕၊ ရြာတိရဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြ စုစုေပါင္း၏ ၉၄ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းဆိုေကလည္း ဗဟိုအစိုးရ၏ အခြန္ေငြမွ်၀ီျခင္းကပဲ လာစြာပင္ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းအခြန္တိအမ်ားစုသည္ ရီနံနာင့္ပဲ ပတ္သက္နိန္တတ္သည္။ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရက ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို မွ်၀ီပီးေရ အခြန္တိသည္ ၁၉၉၉ ခုႏွစ္က ႏိုင္ငံGDP၏ ၇ ဒသမ ၄ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းဟိခစြာကနိန္ ၂၀၀၁ ခုႏွစ္ေရာက္ေတခါ ၁၅ ဒသမ ၃ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းအထိ တက္လားခစြာကို တြိရသည္။
ႏုိင္ဂ်ီးရီးယားႏိုင္ငံမွာ သံုးနိန္ေရ အခြန္မွ်၀ီေရးပုံစံ၏ အားနည္းခ်က္ႏွစ္ရပ္ကေတာ့ ရီနံအရင္းအျမစ္တိအေပၚမွာ အျငင္းပြားမွဳတိမ်ားျခင္း၊ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိ၏ ေငြေႀကးဆိုင္ရာ စီမံမွဳမ်ားတြင္ စည္းမဲ့ကမ္းမဲ့ႏိုင္လြန္းျခင္းရို႕ ျဖစ္သည္။ ရီနံမွ်၀ီပံုမွ်၀ီနည္းတိသည္ Derivation Principleလို႕ေခၚေရ ေဒသတစ္ခု၏အခြန္ရွယ္ယာသည္ ယင္းေဒသက ေကာက္ခံရဟိေရ အခြန္ပမာဏအေပၚမူတည္ရမည္ ဆိုေရ မူကိုသံုးေရပိုင္ အားလံုးကို ျဖန္႕၀ီသင့္သည္(Distribution Principle)ဆိုေရ မူကိုလည္း သံုးထားစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ အျငင္းပြားစရာ၊ သေဘာမတူစရာတိလည္း ျဖစ္ဖို႕မ်ားသည္။ ပထ၀ီအနိန္အထားအရကလည္း ကမ္းလြန္နာင့္ ကမ္းထက္ ရီနံသိုက္တိမွာ ႏုိင္ငံ၏ ျပည္နယ္ ၃၆ ျပည္နယ္ထဲက ျပည္နယ္တခ်ိဳ႕မွာရာ စုျပံဳျပီးေက တည္ဟိနိန္ပါသည္။ ရီနံထုတ္ေတ ျပည္နယ္ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကလည္း ရဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြအေပၚမွွာ အလံုးစံု စီမံထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္ကို လိုခ်င္ဂတ္သည္။ တျခားရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေတျပည္နယ္တိကလည္း လက္ဟိကမ္းထက္ရီနံက ရဟိေရ ၁၃ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းရွယ္ယာ အျပင္ ကမ္းလြန္ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေရးကလည္း ၁၃ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းရသင့္ေရလို႕ ေတာင္းဆိုဂတ္သည္။ (ကမ္းလြန္ရီနံေရ ရီနံခြန္စုစုေပါင္း၏ ၄၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းနာင့္ ညီမွ်သည္။) ယင္းအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ႏိုင္ဂ်ီးရီးယားႏုိင္ငံမွာ ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေတျပည္နယ္တိက ရွယ္ယာ ပိုရဟိေရးကို ေတာင္းဆိုနိန္ဂတ္ေတပိုင္ ရီနံမထြက္ေတေဒသတိကလည္း ဗဟိုအစိုးရပါးက ၀ီစုပိုရဖို႕အတြက္ ေတာင္းဆိုနိန္ဂတ္စြာကို တြိရသည္။
ႏိုင္ဂ်ီးရီးယားႏုိင္ငံမွာ ေအာက္ေျခအစိုးရေခ်တိနာင့္ ပတ္သက္လို႕ ေငြေႀကးဆိုင္ရာ စည္းမ်ဥ္းစည္းကမ္းတိကို တရား၀င္ျပဌာန္းထားျခင္းမဟိစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ၂၀၀၀-၂၀၀၁ ခုႏွစ္ ရီနံစ်ီးတက္ေရအခ်ိန္က ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိ (အထူးသျဖင့္ ရီနံထြက္ေတ ျပည္နယ္တိ)သည္ ခါတိုင္းထက္ပိုျပီးေက အခြန္ေငြ ရရွိခသည္။ ေယေကေလ့ ရရွိေရ ဖဲ့ခ်ာကို ဇာပိုင္ စနစ္တက် အက်ိဳးဟိဟိ သံုးစဲြဂတ္ရဖို႕ဆိုေရ စည္းကမ္းသတ္မွတ္ခ်က္တိကိုက်ခါ တခါတည္းထည့္သြင္း မပီးခစြာကို တြိရသည္။ ေယခါ ရဟိေရ ဖဲ့ခ်တိကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက မဆင္မျခင္ သံုးစဲြပလုိက္သည္။ ယင္း၏အက်ိဳးဆက္အျဖစ္ ကုန္ပစၥၫ္းစ်ီးတိ တက္လားျခင္း၊ ေငြေႀကး ေဖာင္းပြလာျခင္း စေရ မလိုလားအပ္ေတ ဆိုးက်ိဳးတိကို ျဖစ္ေပၚစီခသည္။
ရီနံခြန္မွ်၀ီေရးသည္ ႏိုင္ဂ်ီးရီးယားႏုိင္ငံ၏ ေငြေႀကးေပၚလစီပုိင္းကို မရုန္းႏုိင္မလြတ္ႏုိင္ အခက္အခဲထဲကို ပို႕ပလုိက္ပိုင္ ျဖစ္စီသည္။ ႏုိင္ငံ၏ ေငြေႀကးထက္၀က္ေက်ာ္ကို ျဖန္႕၀ီပီးပလုိက္ေတအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရမွာ ႏုိင္င့ံစီးပြားေရးလမ္းစိုင္တိကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ေရအခါမွာ အခက္အခဲတိအမ်ားႀကီး တြိလာရသည္။
အျဖစ္သင့္ဆံုးက ျပည္နယ္နာင့္ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို ပီးေရ ဘ႑ာေရးအရင္းအျမစ္တိေရ ရီနံစ်ီးအတက္အက်၏ ရိုက္ခတ္မွဳတိက ကင္း၀ီးနိန္ရမည္။ ယင္းအစိုးရတိသည္လည္း လက္ခံရဟိေရ ဘ႑ာေရးအရင္းအျမစ္တိကို ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္သံုးစဲြႏိုင္ေရ အရည္အခ်င္း ဟိနိန္ရမည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ေျပာရေက ေအပိုင္ အတက္အက်ဟိတတ္ေတ အခြန္ေငြတိကို ဗဟိုအစိုးရကနိန္ အလဲြအေျပာင္းလုပ္ျပီးေက မွ်၀ီစြာထက္ ေဒသခံအစိုးတိ၏ ျပည္သူ႕၀န္ေဆာင္မွဳလုပ္ငန္းတိကို အတတ္ႏုိင္ဆံုး လုပ္ေဆာင္ပီးႏိုင္ေရ၊ တည္ျငိမ္မွဳဟိေရ ဘ႑ာေငြ ပီးအပ္မွဳ စနစ္ကို က်င့္သံုးသင့္ပါသည္။
ရရွား
ရရားႏုိင္ငံမွာ ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕က ရဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြတိသည္ အသင့္အတင့္မ်ားသည္။ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရအဆင့္မွာဆိုေက ရီနံတစ္ခုတည္းက ရဟိေရအခြန္သည္ စုစုေပါင္းအခြန္၏ ၂၅ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းနီးပါး၊ ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ႏွစ္ခုေပါင္းက ရဟိေရ အခြန္သည္ ၄၅ နာင့္ ၅၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းႀကား ဟိသည္။ ယင္းအထဲမွာ ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕လုပ္ငန္းက ရဟိေရ အျမတ္ခြန္ (profit taxes)၊ Value Added Tax (VAT)၊ ျပည္တြင္းထုတ္ကုန္ခြန္ (excises)၊ ပို႕ကုန္ခြန္နာင့္ ျမီထြက္အရင္းအျမစ္ခြန္ (resource mineral taxes)တိ ပါ၀င္ေႀကာင္း သိဟိရသည္။ အခြန္အမ်ားစုကို ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရက ေကာက္ခံျပီးေက ရဟိစြာအခြန္တိကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိနာင့္ အတိုင္းအတာတစ္ရပ္အထိ မွ်ယူဂတ္သည္။ မွ်ယူစြာမွာလည္း တခါတလီညိွဳျပီးေက တြက္ခ်က္ခဲြ၀ီဂတ္ေတပိုင္ တခါတလီလည္း တရသီႏွဳန္း (fixed rate)အတိုင္း ခဲြ၀ီဂတ္သည္။ ေယေကေလ့ သဘာ၀ အရင္းအျမစ္ခြန္ (natural resources taxes)တိကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက အဓိက ေကာက္ခံသည္။ ယင္းအခြန္သည္ ရီနံထြက္ေဒသတိ၏ အေရးႀကီးေရ အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္ တစ္ခုလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းအခြန္ထဲမွာ ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေရး ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး (royalties)၊ ျမီထြက္သယံဇာတသုိက္တိ သံုးခ နာင့္ ရွာေဖြခ(Exploration Tax) စေရ အခြန္အမ်ိဳးအစားတိ ပါ၀င္သည္။
ရီနံစေရ သဘာ၀ အရင္းအျမစ္တိေရ နိန္ရာတခ်ိဳ႕မွာရာ စုျပံဳတည္ဟိနိန္တတ္ေတအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ရီနံထြက္ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကုိ အခြန္ေကာက္ခံခြင့္ပီးျခင္းသည္ ႏိုင္ငံတြင္း အခြန္၀င္ေငြ မညီမွ်မွဳတိကို ျဖစ္ေပၚစီသည္။ ၁၉၉၇ ခုႏွစ္စာရင္းတိအရ စုစုေပါင္းလူဦးေရ၏ ၅ ဒသမ ၅ ရာ နိန္ထုိင္ေရ အခ်မ္းသာဆံုး ေဒသ ၅ ခုသည္ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိအားလံုးေပါင္း၀င္ေငြ၏ ၅၃ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကို ရဟိခသည္။
သဘာ၀အရင္းအျမစ္ ေပါႀကြယ္ေရ ေဒသတိက သူရို႕ေဒသက သယံဇာတတိကို လက္ရွိအေျခအေနထက္ ပိုျပီးေက ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္လုပ္ကိုင္ခ်င္နိန္ဂတ္သည္။ အျခားတဘက္မွာလည္း စီးပြားေရးဆုိင္ရာ သံုးသပ္ခ်က္တိက ႏိုင္ငံတြင္း ညီမွ်မွဳတိကို ဖန္တီးပီးႏိုင္ေအာင္ ဗဟိုဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရကနိန္ျပီးေက ရီနံခြန္ က႑ကို ေအထက္ပိုလို႕ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္လားဖို႕စြာကို လိုလားဂတ္သည္။ ႏိုင္ဂ်ီးရီးယားႏုိင္ငံပံုစံပိုင္ ေကာက္ခံရဟိေရ ရီနံခြန္မွ်၀ီျခင္းေရ ရရွားႏုိင္ငံအတြက္လည္း အေကာင္းဆံုး အေျဖ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ေႀကာင္း သံုးသပ္ရသည္။ ေဒသတြင္း ထုတ္လုပ္ခြန္ (production excises) စေရ အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို တာ၀န္ခဲြအပ္ ေကာက္ခံခုိင္းျခင္းနာင့္ အားကိုးေလာက္ေတ ေငြေႀကးလြဲေျပာင္းမွဳပံုစံတိကို သံုးစဲြျခင္းရို႕ကရာ ရီနံစ်ီးအတက္အက် ဂယက္ကို ပိုျပီးေက ခံႏိုင္ျပီးေက ခုိင္မာေရ ဘ႑ာေရးစနစ္တစ္ခုကို ဖန္တီးပီးႏုိင္မည္ဟု သံုးသပ္ရသည္။
ဗင္နီဇဲြလား
ရီနံခြန္သည္ ဗင္နီဇဲြလားႏိုင္ငံ ဗဟိုအစိုးရ၏ ႀကီးမားေရ အဓိက အခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တစ္ခုျဖစ္သည္။ ၁၉၉၇-၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္စာရင္းတိအရ စုစုေပါင္းအခြန္ေငြ၏ ပ်မ္းမွ် ၄၇ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းဟိသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံ GDP၏ ၉ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းနာင့္ ညီမွ်သည္။ ယင္းအခြန္တိထဲမွာ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး၊ ၀င္ေငြခြန္ (income taxes)၊ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက ရဟိေရ ရွယ္ယာတိ၏ အျမတ္(dividends)တိလည္း ပါ၀င္သည္။
ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိသည္ ဗင္နီဇဲြလားႏုိင္ငံ၏ ေငြေႀကးေပၚလစီက႑မွာ အေရးႀကီးေရ နိန္ရာက ပါ၀င္နိန္သည္။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိသည္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရသံုးေငြ၏ သံုးပံုတစ္ပံုခန္႕ကို သံုးစဲြဂတ္သည္။ အခြန္ေငြအမ်ားစုသည္ ဗဟိုအစုိးရ၏ အခြန္မွ်၀ီေရးအစီအစိုင္တိက လာေရအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ဗဟိုအစိုးရအေပၚမွာ အမ်ားႀကီးမွီခိုနိန္ရသည္။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရ ရဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြ၏ ထက္၀က္ခန္႕(ခန္႕မွန္းေျခ) ကို ရီနံက ရဟိသည္။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိသည္ စုစုေပါင္းရဟိေရ Value Added Taxes (VAT)၏ ၁၅နာင့္ ၂၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းႀကားအပါအ၀င္ တျခားအခြန္၀င္ေပါက္တိကနိန္တဆင့္ စုစုေပါင္းအခြန္ေငြ၏ ၂၀ နာင့္ ၂၅ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းႀကားကို ရဟိသည္။ ယင္းအျပင္ စုစုေပါင္းရဟိေရ ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး(royalties)၏ ၂၀ နာင့္ ၃၀ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းႀကားကိုလည္း ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက ဗဟိုအစိုးရကနိန္ရဟိသည္။
အခြန္ေငြမွ်၀ီျခင္း အစီအစိုင္တိသည္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးနာင့္ ေငြေႀကးဆုိင္ရာ အျငင္းပြားမွဳတိကို အျမဲတေစ ျဖစ္စီသည္။ ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိကို ပီးနိန္ေရ အခြန္ေငြသည္ မ်ားလြန္းသည္လို႕ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက ထင္သည္။ ပီးလုိက္ေတ အခြန္ေငြကို ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက အက်ိဳးရွိရွိ မသံုးလို႕ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက ထင္နိန္သည္။ ဗဟိုအစိုးရက ယင္းအခြန္ေငြတိအေပၚမွာ ပိုျပီးေက ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ႀကိဳးကိုင္ လုပ္လိုသည္။ အျခားတဘက္မွာလည္း ျပည္နယ္နာင့္ေဒသခံအစိုးရတိက ဗဟိုအစိုးရဘားကနိန္ျပီးေက အခြန္ေငြ၀ီစုကို ေအထက္မက ပိုရခ်င္သည္။
ယူေအအီး (United Arab Emirates)
ယူေအအီးျပည္ေထာင္စုႏိုင္ငံကို ၁၉၇၁ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ေဒသ ၇ ခုနာင့္ တည္ေထာင္ခပါသည္။ ေဒသတစ္ခုစီမွာ သူ႕ မူဆလင္ ေဂါင္းေဆာင္နာင့္သူဟိျပီးေက စီးပြားေရး နာင့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္တိ အထိုက္အေလ်ာက္ ဟိသည္။ ကိုယ့္ေဒသကထြက္ဟိေရ ရီနံတိအေပၚမွာလည္း ကိုယ္ပိုင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္တြယ္ခြင့္ ဟိသည္။ ၁၉၉၇-၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္စာရင္းတိအရ ႏုိင္ငံတစ္ခုလံုးက ေကာက္ခံရဟိေရ အခြန္စုစုေပါင္း၏ ထက္၀က္ခန္႕ကို ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕က႑က ရဟိသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံGDP၏ ၁၈ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းနာင့္ ညီမွ်သည္။
သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ေဒသအစိုးရတိသည္ ရီနံနာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ခြန္တိကို ပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး၊ ကုမၸဏီအျမတ္ လြဲေျပာင္းမွဳ (Company Profit Transfers)၊ ၀င္ေငြခြန္ ျဖတ္ပိုင္း (Income Tax Receipts)တိကနိန္တဆင့္ ရဟိသည္။ ႏိုင္ငံ၏ အႀကီးမားဆံုးေဒသျဖစ္ေတ အဘူ ဒါဘီ (Abu Dhabi)ဆိုေက ၁၉၉၇ နာင့္ ၂၀၀၀ႀကားမွာ
ေဒသအခြန္ေငြစုစုေပါင္း၏ ပ်မ္းမွ် ၅၈ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းကို ရီနံစိမ္းပိုင္ရွင္ေႀကး (crude oil royalties)နာင့္ တျခားအခြန္တိကနိန္တဆင့္ ရဟိသည္။
ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရသည္ အပိုင္း(၁)မွာ ေဖာ္ျပခေရပိုင္ ေအာက္ကနိန္အထပ္ကိုတက္လားေရ အခြန္မွ်၀ီျခင္း စနစ္ကို က်င့္သံုးသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ေျပာရေက အဘူဒါဘီ၊ ဒူဘုိင္း(Dubai)၊ ရွာဂ်(Sharjah)စေရ ရီနံထုတ္လုပ္ေတ ေဒသတိက ဗဟိုအစိုးရကို ဖဲ့ခ်ာ(cash)သတ္သတ္ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ဖဲ့ခ်ာနာင့္ တျခားပံ့ပိုးမွဳတိေပါင္းျပီးေကေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ပီးေဆာင္ဂတ္သည္။ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရသည္ အခြန္ေငြ သံုးပံု ႏွစ္ပံုခန္႕ကို ယင္းပိုင္ ပီးေဆာင္ျခင္းတိ၊ ၀န္ေဆာင္မွဳလုပ္ငန္းတိစီစိုင္ပီးျခင္းတိက ရဟိသည္။ (ဗဟိုအစိုးရအခြန္၀င္ေငြ၏ သံုးပံုႏွစ္ပံုသည္ ရဟိေရ ႏွစ္ အေပၚမွာ မူတည္ျပီးေက အဘူဒါဘီေဒသ ရီနံခြန္၏ ၆၀ နာင့္ ၁၀၆ ရာခုိင္ႏွဳန္းႀကားမွာ ဟိတတ္သည္။) ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရအတြက္ ပီးရဖို႕အခြန္ပမာဏအတိအက်ကို ႏွစ္စိုင္ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရနာင့္ ေဒသအာဏာပိုင္အစိုးရတိႀကားမွာ အျမဲတမ္းညွိျပီးေက ေဒသအာဏာပိုင္အစိုးရတိက ပီးေဆာင္ဂတ္သည္။ ဖယ္ဒရယ္အစိုးရသည္ တည္ျငိမ္မွဳဟိေရ အခြန္ေငြ အမ်ားႀကီးကုိ ပိုင္ဆိုင္ေရအတြက္ေႀကာင့္ ရီနံစ်ီးအတက္အက်ဟိေကေလ့ အခြန္မွ်၀ီျခင္းလုပ္ငန္းစုိင္တိက အခက္အခဲမဟိပဲ ေလ်ာေမြ႕နိန္တတ္စြာကို တြိဟိရပါသည္။
*အပိုင္း (၄)ကို ဆက္လက္ဖတ္ရွဳပါရန္။
သဲကႏၱာရတိက အျမဲတမ္းပူနိန္လား
သဲကႏၱာရတိက ပူေရ ဆိုစြာကေတာ့ အမွန္ပါ။ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု၊ ကယ္လီဖိုးနီးယားျပည္နယ္က Death Valley ေဒသမွာဆိုေက စံခ်ိန္ခ်ိဳးအပူခ်ိန္ေရ ၅၇ ဒီဂရီစင္တီဂရိတ္ (၁၃၄ ဒီဂရီဖာရင္ဟုိက္)ထိ ဟိခဖူးပါေရ။ ေယေကေလ့ သဲကႏၱာရတိေရ အျမဲတမ္းပူနိန္စြာေတာ့ မဟုတ္ပါ။ ဥပမာ-အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု အေနာက္ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာဟိေရ အယ္ရီဇိုးနားျပည္နယ္(Arizona)က သဲကႏၱာရျမိဳ႕ျဖစ္ေတ ဖီးနစ္(Phoenix)ျမိဳ႕မွာဆိုေက ဇန္န၀ါရီလ၏ အနိမ့္ဆံုး ပ်မ္းမွ်အပူခ်ိန္ေရ ၁ ဒသမ ၇ ဒီဂရီစင္တီဂရိတ္ (၃၅ ဒီဂရီဖာရင္ဟုိက္)ေလာက္မွာ ဟိပါေရ။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ ရီခဲမွတ္အထက္ တဖဲ့ေခ်ရာ မ်ားပါေရ။ လတၱီက်ဴး ၂၀ နာင့္ ၄၀ ႀကားမွာ ဟိတတ္ေတ subtropical ေဒသတိက သဲကႏၱာရတိမွာေတာ့ ေဆာင္းရာသီဆိုျပီးေကေတာ့ မဟိတတ္ပါ။ ေယေကေလ့ အပူခ်ိန္အေျပာင္းအလဲေတာ့ ျဖစ္တတ္ပါေရ။
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wunti Nat by San Shwe Bu
Wunti Nat
San Shwe Bu
12/28/2008
Nat worship prevailed in Arakan from the earliest times. Abundant references are made to it in all our literature. But for some mysterious reason, no particular mention is made of the name of either a god or a goddess. They were, however, divided into two classes. One looked after the household and family, and the other presided over the affairs of the kingdom. Thus, in all personal matters, household deities were consulted. Kings received their guidance from the other kind on the eve of any important political movement. No journey could be undertaken nor an army raised without the previous approval and sanction of the special deities.
The earliest mention we have of the name of one of this latter class is that of Wunti, whose worship first began with King Pai Pyu of Wesali in the tenth century. It is recorded that, with her assistance, this king succeeded in driving out the Shans who poured into the country from the north-east. So to commemorate the event, he called the place of operation Myauk-U, and set up and dedicated a temple to her worship.
From the time, her name disappears from history, though her worship must still have continued. Several centuries later, in the days of Myauk-U Kings, she once more occupied a conspicuous place. But this time, she was no longer at the above named city, but near a village on the left bank of the Yochaung, a considerable stream that feeds the Kaladan on the right. Until [End of Page 52] quite recently, there was a dolmen there will remembered by a number of people of the locality. Regarding the special rites and ceremonies attached to her worship, nothing is definitely known; there is a very quaint tradition concerning one of her exploits in the cause of King and country.
During the prosperous reign of Min Pha Laung in Arakan, Bureng Naung, the ruler of Pegu, harboured the ambitious design of invading Arakan. With that end in view, he sent ambassadors to the Court of Akabar, who had just then conquered Bengal. The main object of this mission seems to have been to find out the Mughal attitude towards his contemplated project of conquest. Min Pha Laung being aware of this, and, in order to make the requisite preparations to defend his country, consulted the goddess Wunti regarding the coming struggle.
She replied that it was unnecessary for a powerful king like himself to go to all the trouble and expense of raising an army, but that, when nations were at war, the opposing deities, like the Homeric gods, first engaged themselves in conflict and decided the fate of the contending armies beforehand. She told the King that she had a brother, who guarded the palace of the Burmese King that she would go over there to see what she could do to serve him (the King of Arakan).
With her numerous followers, she arrived at the palace of Bureng Naung at about midnight. She not only found the whole palace wrapped in slumber, but also came across her brother keeping guard at the principal entrance to the building. After an exchange of greetings and an artful display of simulated affection, she requested her brother’s permission for a glimpse of the sleeping King, whose military exploits had been the wonder and admiration of the age. The necessary consent being obtained, she entered the Royal Chamber, and, standing at the head of the bed for a moment, she raised her five fingers above the recumbent King. She then returned to Arakan with all her followers rejoicing.
On the following morning, five large carbuncles appeared round the neck of the Burmese King, from the effects of which he subsequently died. Thus through her timely intervention, Arakan was saved from all the attendant horrors of a foreign invasion which, even if proved unsuccessful, would have brought considerable ruin and misery to the country.
San Shwe Bu
12/28/2008
Nat worship prevailed in Arakan from the earliest times. Abundant references are made to it in all our literature. But for some mysterious reason, no particular mention is made of the name of either a god or a goddess. They were, however, divided into two classes. One looked after the household and family, and the other presided over the affairs of the kingdom. Thus, in all personal matters, household deities were consulted. Kings received their guidance from the other kind on the eve of any important political movement. No journey could be undertaken nor an army raised without the previous approval and sanction of the special deities.
The earliest mention we have of the name of one of this latter class is that of Wunti, whose worship first began with King Pai Pyu of Wesali in the tenth century. It is recorded that, with her assistance, this king succeeded in driving out the Shans who poured into the country from the north-east. So to commemorate the event, he called the place of operation Myauk-U, and set up and dedicated a temple to her worship.
From the time, her name disappears from history, though her worship must still have continued. Several centuries later, in the days of Myauk-U Kings, she once more occupied a conspicuous place. But this time, she was no longer at the above named city, but near a village on the left bank of the Yochaung, a considerable stream that feeds the Kaladan on the right. Until [End of Page 52] quite recently, there was a dolmen there will remembered by a number of people of the locality. Regarding the special rites and ceremonies attached to her worship, nothing is definitely known; there is a very quaint tradition concerning one of her exploits in the cause of King and country.
During the prosperous reign of Min Pha Laung in Arakan, Bureng Naung, the ruler of Pegu, harboured the ambitious design of invading Arakan. With that end in view, he sent ambassadors to the Court of Akabar, who had just then conquered Bengal. The main object of this mission seems to have been to find out the Mughal attitude towards his contemplated project of conquest. Min Pha Laung being aware of this, and, in order to make the requisite preparations to defend his country, consulted the goddess Wunti regarding the coming struggle.
She replied that it was unnecessary for a powerful king like himself to go to all the trouble and expense of raising an army, but that, when nations were at war, the opposing deities, like the Homeric gods, first engaged themselves in conflict and decided the fate of the contending armies beforehand. She told the King that she had a brother, who guarded the palace of the Burmese King that she would go over there to see what she could do to serve him (the King of Arakan).
With her numerous followers, she arrived at the palace of Bureng Naung at about midnight. She not only found the whole palace wrapped in slumber, but also came across her brother keeping guard at the principal entrance to the building. After an exchange of greetings and an artful display of simulated affection, she requested her brother’s permission for a glimpse of the sleeping King, whose military exploits had been the wonder and admiration of the age. The necessary consent being obtained, she entered the Royal Chamber, and, standing at the head of the bed for a moment, she raised her five fingers above the recumbent King. She then returned to Arakan with all her followers rejoicing.
On the following morning, five large carbuncles appeared round the neck of the Burmese King, from the effects of which he subsequently died. Thus through her timely intervention, Arakan was saved from all the attendant horrors of a foreign invasion which, even if proved unsuccessful, would have brought considerable ruin and misery to the country.
Arakan: A Promised Land by Dr. Nayaka
Arakan: A Promised Land
Dr. A. S. Nayaka
12/28/2008
Arakan, a land which cherishes Buddha's principles of moral code, tranquility, love, compassion and wisdom, has patronized Buddhism for more than two millenniums, was the seat of an ancient sovereign country and religion, the nursery of art, and the center of the Buddhist stronghold. Myriad ancient pagodas and vast ruins of priceless archaeological treasure scattered all over the country are glorious symbols of past and are the present great recollections of the people of Arakan. Many are still buried and under the earthed. The large number of statues and pagodas gives one of an example of Buddhist art, but also makes it one of the richest repositories of sculpture in Arakan. Buddhism has been the national religion of Arakan and the epic center for the transmission of faith to Southeast Asia. The insightful influence of the Buddhism has been compelling testimony that can be seen in Arakan from the hill sides dotted with the pagodas, the symbols of yellow robe, the religious order of monks, and monasteries in almost every village shaping the character of the village people and their institutions. Since the region has been isolated from the rest of world for centuries and has remained and preserved unique customs and traditions in addition to Arakan’s own history, and religion which had existed since the dawn of civilization.
In the past Arakan was known as Thuwannapura, Ramathuwannapura, Ayujjhapura, Rakkhapura, Dynyawaddy, Mahawihika and Mahinthakamandala. According to tradition Indo-Aryan people reached Arakan from India Gangha delta and settled in Kaladan Valley at the very early time. Before migrating to Arakan, those Indo-Aryan are thought to have mixed and intermarried with a migrant Mongoloid tribe in eastern India and Arakan. An eminent Arakanese archaeologist, U San Shwe Bu, pointed out that the Indo-Aryan came to Arakan from Majjhimadesa who were living on the bank of river Ganges. Moreover, ancient Arakanese belonged to Magadha region as their ancestral places who later settled in Arakan region and consequently found their first capital city at Dynyawaddy. The Dynyawaddy was classified in three different ages known as the first Dynyawaddy (3500- 1483B.C.), found by Marayu, the second Dynyawaddy (1483-580 B.C.) by King Kanrazagree; the third Dynyawaddy (580-B.C. to 326 A.D.) was found by King Canda Suriya. The second period in history of Arakan was Vesali Kyauk-HleGarr (321-1018) found by Dven Candra, and the history recorded the highest civilization in the Bay of Bengal had thrived with the international trade and commerce. Gold and silver coins of five denominations were used.
Located east of Vanga and Smatata of ancient India of which great religion, culture and politics had enormous influenced on the Arakanese people since immemorial. The historians believed that the Mongoloid race in Arakan was mostly inter-related with Indo-Ariyans, who came over and probably ruled the native population, gradually impressing on their culture and religion. Arakanese chronicles said that the name of Rakhine was originated from Pali word Rakkhapura meaning the land of Rakasha, Rakhasa, Rakkha, Rakkhaing, who are titled this name in honor of preservation on their national inheritance and moral values.
"The Zambu among the islands
The Rakhine among the nations
Such are their fames circulated.
Virtuous as they are, and patriotic,
Diligent in work and charitable to all-
Equally liked deities and men;
Let theirs be the coveted Nibbana."
True to this stanza, as illustrated in the Buddhawan-an ancient Arakanese script, the Arakanese (Rakhines) heroically lived in their ancient homeland of Arakan state devoting to safeguard the two essential qualities, namely nationality (Amyo) and morality (Sila). Above classical verse illuminated how the true nature of the Arakanese way of life and their highest expectation is to achieve the ultimate goal of Nirvana. The Buddhist ecumenical outlook and way of life seems to have enough scope for adjustment and subsequence change of indigenous believes and practices, so that religion became swiftly acknowledged by the local inhabitants but was able in the process to bring about harmonious development in social values and traditions in the nation as a whole.
The remoulding of Arakanese Buddhism took place in the social background of Arakan's unfolding society which played a determined role in giving shape to the characteristic features of Arakanese society. Buddhism has long been an important part of the cultural heritage of Arakan, and it flourished in Arakan receiving royal patronage. It has not been a mere system of believes to Arakanese; it encompasses the entirety of our culture and civilization and national character the very essence of our lives. Of all the bonds, which defined Arakanese as the people as a nation, religion was undoubtedly strongest. Arakanese national identity becomes indistinguishable from its religion. It is undeniable fact to say that everyday life of an Arakanese from the cradle to grave, together with his art and craft and literature and culture, and arts other element of his life, are all based upon and moulded by the one common factor, the spirit of Buddhism.
The advent of Buddhism in the 6th century B.C. was an epoch-making event not only in the history of Indo-Arakan sub-continent, but also it was in the history of the world. We know very little about pre-Buddhist India. The historical materials on the basis of which ancient history has been written are scanty. The true historical knowledge, which we gather, is from the time of the Buddha. The most authentic sources of ancient history are the inscription, copperplates, coins, traveler's reports, historical accounts, and religious texts from various religions. Out of them, the inscriptions, coins, and copperplates are associated with the epigraphic records of ancient time. The Greek Ambassadors and Chinese travelers have left valuable accounts relating to Indian sub-continent.
Arakanese claimed to be the first state in Asia to have received Buddhism from India. In fact, Arakan’s historical traditions are inseparably interlined with Buddhism from India. It is known that the early Buddhists of India had a strong inclination to carry their religion, and with it their civilization into the Arakan region which lay immediate frontiers. There can be not doubt either those Buddhist adventures, traders and missionaries managed to reach the Arakan region at very early period even before the advent of Christian era. These adventures, missionaries, and their followers brought with them the arts of civilization which were laid the foundations of political and cultural history of Arakan.
Most of the Arakanese chronicle sources unanimously state that Buddhism, which had existed during the reign of Sanda Suriya, who dedicated the illustrious Maha Muni Image in B.C. 554, has become the prime faith the phenomenon now called Buddhism in Arakan which began its gentle progress to farthest reached of the globe. Ancient Arakanese legendary gives detail accounts of King Sanda Suriya who endowed the great shrine Maha Muni on the occasion of Lord Buddha landing to Arakan in 123 Bowdaw Inzana Era, 25 years before Buddha's Mahaparinibbana. The Buddha visited to Arakan expressly to enable King Sanda Suriya to build a life-size image of himself and Buddha blessed on alighted on the top of Thelagiri Hill situated the east of Kyawtaw on the bank of Kaladan. The Buddha had parted His Holiness teeth emitted rays of light that shone forth with a dazzling vividness in all directions, and to the reverend Ananda, his beloved cousin. He blessed the wishful remarks: "Danyawaddy is great and splendid country which shall have ninety-nine towns on its eastern bank of the Gacchapanadi and ninety-nine towns on its western bank. Its kings shall continue to be the ancient Kshatriya stock and particularly our Sakya race has been descended from Ajjuna Hermit-King of Kapilavastu. As a Bodhisattva, I was reborn many a times here; I shall have in this noble country; my own image built that shall enclose in this land for 5000 years during the life of my Sasana or Buddhism". Arakanese were justly claimed to be the first in Asia outside India to have heard the word of the Buddha that was too from his His Holiness lips. When the image was finished, it was established in Thiriguta Hill amidst universal rejoicing when gods and men could mingle freely to worship the great image of Maha Muni.
How deeply intertwined the image of Maha Muni was in the heart of Arakanese might be gathered from the following classical passage in poem Arakanese Princess Egyin written by Badu Mong Nyo in 15th century.
(Rakhine Princes E-Chun)
(Stanza-9)
Truly peculiar and noble indeed,
That banner of king of king,
Sadden elephant of snow-white variety
Possessed while ruling Dynyawady,
Golden Land, country complete with prosperity.
The reign of Sanda Thuriya, generous monarch,
Coincided with the life of the Buddha.
Invited Him to Dynyawady with all his heart.
Due to his request in earnest,
Lord mercifully let him cast
Maha Muni Image, now we have.
Visukamma and Sikra Deva came to help.
Alloy of five noble metals was used by them
But they could not accomplished by then
Only after the Buddha offered
Seven Handfuls of His bodily warmth to the sculpture,
Beloved Brother, His Holiness comes to life,
As His representative exact, the image he left;
Man, Deva and Brahma have a chance
To worship Him in great respect.
Great image was held in reverence.
(Rahine Roma Magazine)
Later Maha Muni, the great image of worship became symbols of an independent Arakan, has retained its deep spiritual vibration inspired countless beings to contemplate upon righteous way of life, higher principles to live for and noble ideas to aspire after, and the shrine itself has been the most focus of attention for millions of pilgrims throughout centuries. Its history supplemented by geographical, archaeological, and literacy sources of Arakan as well as travelers accounts had enlightened us, it is true.
Information regarding early introduction of Buddhism in Arakan is from two sources; first from the archaeological discoveries and the second from the records of Arakanese literature. From archaeological evidence, we find a number of symbols that are of religious significance, special to Buddhism. Perhaps most importantly, there have been discovered several image stone figures. An ancient stone inscription in Nagari character was discovered by renowned Archaeologist Dr. Forchhammer. Known as Salagiri, this hill was where the great teacher came to Arakan some two thousand five hundred years ago. Somewhere from eastern part of this hill, a stone image in Dhamma-cakra-mudra now kept in Mrauk-U museum, was found earlier in 1923. This relief sculpture found on the Salagiri Hill represents Buddha preaching King Canda Suriya belongs to 5th century A.D.; five more red sandstone slabs with the carving were found close by the south of this Salagiri Hill in 1986. They are the same type as the single slab found earlier in 1923. These carving slabs of Bhumispara-mudra, Kararuna-mudra, Dhammacakra-mudara, and Mmahaparinibbana-mudra represent the life of Buddha.
These sculptures provide earliest evident about the advent of Buddhism into Arakan; during the life time of the Buddha and these discoveries were therefore assumed as the figures of King Canda Suriya of Dyanawady, who dedicated the Great Maha Muni Image. These archaeological findings have been studied by eminent scholars and conclusion is that the Maha Muni was made during the king Sanda Suriya era. But some historians and scholars viewed the creation date of Maha Muni shrine still remains a mystery and the lack of comprehensive data, and this subject remains controversy till date.
The oldest artifact, stone image of Fat Monk inscribed "Saccakaparibajaka Jina" in Brahmi inscription comes to the date of first century A.D.; the stone inscriptions are of Sanskrit, Pali, Rakhine, Pru and Arabic languages. The cubic stone inscriptions record the peace making between the governor of Thandaway Mong Khari (1433-1459) and Razadhiraj the Mon Emperor in Arakanese inscription. This was found from a garrison hill at the oldest site of Parein. A stone slab with the alleged figure of the Buddha preaching, King Canda Suriya bored testimony to the Salagiri tradition, depicting of the advent of the Teacher to Dyanyawaddy.
Since after receiving Buddhism and uninterrupted Buddhist tradition has been in the main fabric of the Arakan society which was influenced by Indian Buddhist tradition and culture as evident from important Arakanese historical sources and archaeological findings in the region. Monumental edifices, inscriptions, pagodas and images of the Buddha discovered in Arakan are compelling evident-witness to the prosperity of kingdom. Located in various ancient royal sites, the edicts and inscriptions of each king -clear indication of personality and heritage along with the pious activities-he had performed in support of the Buddhist religion during his reign. Even today mouldering ruin of ancient statue and pagoda in almost parts of Arakan are surviving example of what was once architectural genre. The principal pagodas and monasteries once a lofty and richly decorated structures, still stand and pitifully through. Others stupas, monasteries, pillared halls, shines, railing, and original established parts all over the country have been ruined to the ground level. A number of archaeological treasures have been stolen and many have been broken into the pieces. Many have savagely ruined by man and nature. Some are left out as a witness to the original grandeur of the Chaitya.
Anandacandra Inscriptions date back to 729 A.D. originally from Vesali now preserved at Shitethaung indicates adequate evidence for the earliest foundation of Buddhism. Dr. E. H. Johnston's analysis reveals a list of kings which he considered reliable beginning from Candra dynasty. The western face inscription has 72 lines of text recorded in 51 verses describing the Anandacandra's ancestral rulers. Each face recorded the name and ruling period of each king who were believed to have ruled over the land before Anandacandra. Archaeology has shown that the establishment of so many stone pagodas and inscriptions which have been totally neglected for centuries in different part of Arakan speak of popular favored by Buddhism. Mrauk-U, the last kingdom of independent Arakan founded by King Mong Saw Mon in 1430, has become the principle seat of Buddhism, has reaching at zenith of the golden age. Mrauk-U was divided into three periods: the earliest period (1430-1513), the middle period (1531-1638), and the last period (1638-1785). In Arakan antiquities at the Mrauk-U seems to give rational evidence as to where Buddhism was settled down. These include stone inscriptions, Buddha images, the Buddha's foot-prints and the great pagoda itself which, stripped its later-constructed top, would be of the same design as the Gupta style of ancient India.
The crowing event in the history of Arakan was the Convention of the Buddhist Council at the top of golden hill of Vesali under the royal patronage of King Dhammawizaya in 638 AD. through joint effort of two countries, Arakan and Ceylon. This momentous triumph of the great council was participated by one thousand monks from Ceylon and one thousand monks from Arakan kingdom. As a fitting celebration of the occasion, the lavish construction of pagodas, statues and monasteries were undertaken for the purpose of inscribing the Tripitaka. After Vesali, Pyinsa was found by Lemro dynasty in 181 A.D; the great king of dynasty was King Mim-Yin-Phru, who turned his attention towards the development of Buddhism, and in 847 A.D. he conveyed the second Buddhist council in Arakan attended by 800 Arahants. Arakanese chronicles report that therein the Tripitaka and Atthakatha were incribed on the golden plate and enshrined. Never has there been impediment in the practice of Theravada Buddhist faith since it has introduced in Arakan. The copious findings of inscription Ye Dhamma verse were practical evidence that Theravada was dominant faith if epigraphic and archaeological sources were to be believed. The Royal patronage has always been significant factor contribution to stability and progress of the religion in Arakan.
Now how far these accounts are credible for the modern scholars? Arakan is the only state in Southeast Asia to be geographically connected to India by both land and sea route which is considered as the transition center of spreading Buddhism to Southeast Asia. There can be no denying factor that Buddhism has been great cultural forces in Arakan and rallying point for Buddhists over the world. Ancient Indian historians concluded that eastern regions of India were always regarded culturally and strategically as part of India, and the rest of the territory remained Indian in culture and predominantly within geopolitical orbit of India. The famed Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsan recorded in his travel account that one of Chinese monks; a priest of King-Chau (in Hupeh) of China went to India by southern sea-route and arrived at A-Li-Ki-Lo known as Arakan. A-Li-Ki-Lo (Arakan) was the eastern limit of India. It was part of Jambudipa. Bing ancient geographical part of Jambudipa, Arakan exists as a contiguous land with India, and thus Indian civilization has spread over Arakan since the very beginning of Arakan history. This geographical proximity and Arakanese literature records are more historical realistic and considered that Buddhism had spread to Rakkhapura before Asoka period of India.
It has become customary with modern scholars to play a double role. On one hand, they use Arakanese sources for their research material. On other hands, they neglect the significance of the narratives in Arakanese sources. Whatever historical enlightenment modern scholars could get from the Arakanese sources, they avail of it while they cast aside whatever they do not find their own liking, branding it as neither “nationalism”, “mysticism” or “mistake”. This seems to be unfair and misinterpretation to the spirit of Arakanese authority and the value of their national treasure.
By dismissing the long-settled Arakanese theories on such an important subject of Buddhism which has arrived to this region formerly part of Jambudipa earlier before commencement of Christian era, in fact Sappadanapakarana-a palm leaf manuscript found by Dr. Forchmer gives interesting accounts that the Buddha with 500 Arahans came to Dynyawaddy by aerial journey. The earliest known artifacts discovered were a Fat Monk dating back to first century A.D. and other Buddha images preaching to King Canda Suriya, and the earliest important inscription found at Taung-paukgree village are good sources to be believed that Buddhism had existed in Arakan during reign of Canda Suriya. On the other hands, vast collection of less known Arakanese literatures are great volume to be examined if literature sources are to be believed, and archeological unearthed are the foremost symbol of earliest Indian Buddhist civilization link to this region, as geographical proximity between India and Arakan is still unquestionable. But some outside observers do not seem to accept these indications of Arakan preserved. According to Arakanese chronicle sources, Buddhism have been arrived to Arakan first by visiting Buddha himself with five hundred Arahants in 554 B.C. and subsequently by arriving missionaries sent by Asoka in third century B.C; it is not that easy, as it might seem to the modern scholars who are working in consultation with Arakanese sources. If they find the materials inconceivable, and then either they should not go after it, or they should refute it in clear terms, and that is they do should do. Their position therefore is far from satisfactory. Their attitude has the shortcoming of the outsider’s approach. They have not been able to show any grasp of the Arakan way of opinion and currently have only managed to come with sarcasms.
To give an example, when an Arakanese historian simply says that the Maha Muni Image was made during the life time of the Buddha, he is regarded as an authority; but when he enters into details with traditional background and with its original literature source, he is said making mistake. What is that? Should one say so, without having looked deeper into the significance of scholar’s statement that might have been made on logical and historical grounds? In fact, statements occurring in older classics cannot be interpreted in a straightforward manner--we live in a world different from that of theirs and that has intervened a shift of linguistic and idiomatic convention, followed by revolutionary changes in the concept of science and technology. What one should do in respect of philosophical classics is to adopt an objective and unbiased attitude. It may quite well be the fact that the complex statements which were once reasonable and intelligent. Before we come to say that they are “discreditable”, we should first consider the possibility that the statement could be interpreted to have some forgotten sociological implication. We should have the tolerance to wait till the so-called incomprehensible statements are finally settled by endeavoring and persevering scholars. Such an honest attempt by the scholars concerned is badly needed today, especially for Arakan history research.
A scholar, desirous of knowing the history and culture of ancient Arakan, can in no way discount an enormous treasure of Arakanese literatures. They have been partially laid down contribution of a large volume of worthy still lies buried to be translated into other languages, which the scholars have not yet explored. A careful study of them will be a valuable contribution not only in the sphere of influence of Buddhist literature, but also on Indian history, civilization, and culture of India and Arakan. Arakan, thus, proves to be in some respects as important an apparatus for the study of certain periods of Indian civilization as language of that subcontinent. At the same time, the process of the contribution of Buddhism and assimilation of Indian culture in Arakan proves us with extraordinary interesting and historical valuable example should prove another culture and religion without totally forsaking its own deeply rooted tradition. Scholarly venture upon various aspects of Arakan is, therefore, desirability. This pious task may very well be shouldered by the scholars.
In the circumstantially, the Arakanese are left with no other means than either to surrender to the impositions of the modern scholars as mentioned above, or to refute their views by appealing to logic and history and to start to do scientific research maintaining the culture, literature and spiritual heritage which is based on the teaching of the Buddha and pristine legacy of Arakan. Nothing greater can be said to credit the Arakanes' appeal of the teaching of Buddha and their commitment to safeguard to their ancestral land and the pristine faith of Buddhism.
After introduction of Buddhism to Arakan, history records, how it has been preserved by the Arakanese with the patronage of rulers, as the greatest national treasure to be protected, interpreted, followed, and propagated. Even through during the colonial periods, the protection of this has continued to be the main policy of Buddhist Arakan, which has taken a leading role in nationalist movements for their freedom. Downfall of Arakan independence suffered a great lost of Arakanese Buddhism at hands of vandals, and it was an undeniable truth of history: the victors destroyed symbols of ancient civilization in Arakan to stamp their future on conquests. Since 1785 onwards the painful legacy of colonial rule has brought Arakanese to untold miseries and thousands of Arakan's historical statues and precious artifacts that have lost forever. Among them, the lost of Maha Muni was the greatest sorrowful to the Arakanese than the lost of their independence, as the Arakanese themselves resolutely regarded that their devoted life and the Maha Muni were inseparable by any mean. The victors may take the Maha Muni as booty in the name of conquest but they can never break the spirit of Arakanese to demand nothing less than---it is immortal legacy of Arakan given by the Buddha---it is traditionally unquestionable. The belief in and sentimental attachment of Buddhism and unshakable adoration to Maha Muni could not be erased from their mind and replaced by one another.
Even today, the very holy name of Maha Muni always lives as legacy in the hearts of Arakanese although it has taken away from its birth place of Dynyawady to Burma, which is now enshrined in Mandalay, and it is considered as the oldest sole surviving legacy and is one of the most important sacred images in the Buddhist history of Southeast Asia. Being landmark historical testimony towards the presence of the greatest of mankind has ever witnessed the fame of Maha Muni as the heart of prime faith inspired countless people throughout its history and given the most enduring legacy of pride to the Arakanese in Buddhist world. Indeed, nation as whole owes much to the religion and Arakanese wholeheartedly acknowledging their indebtness to Buddha's teaching. It is therefore not surprising that the Arakanes are always obliged to be cherished and to be proud of belonging to THE LAND OF THE MAHA MUNI, whose legacy is universal truth.
Thezin pan khaing ta mraing mraing
Rakhine phara paung.
The Thazin's sprigs in cheer clusters
Sum the total of Rakhine phara grandeur.
(U Tha Hla, The Rakhaing Vol. (I) No. (7)
Not only Arakan is rich in natural resources, but it is also rich in the establishment of the Buddhist monasteries, pagodas which play a very creative role to development of Arakanese culture and civilization. Arakan offers some of the richest archaeological sites in the Southeast Asia. A number of Buddhist landmarks erected by the Arakanese are still be found intact or the archaeological ruins under the earth. In the city of golden Mrauk-U there are scattering innumerable temples and pagodas which preserved as places, thereby exerting a great influence on spiritual life of the people.
Arakanese chronicle records that more than six million shrines and pagodas flourished in Mrauk-U. In fact, they formed the pride of golden Mrauk-U. Dr. Forchhammer described in his Arakan, "in durability, architectural skill, and ornamentation the Mrauk-U temples far surpass those on the banks of Arrawaddy". Buddhist arts both in the field of architecture and Buddha-image constructions are on the same line of flourishing. An illustrative example of this fact can be seen in the temple of Chitthaung pagoda and colossal Dukekanthein temple. Hence Arakan with its rich legacy has been able to achieve a great success in enriching and disseminating their culture and civilization. Even at the present, these cultural heritage lives sources are precious legacies of sacred symbols of Buddhism since the Arakanese are conscious of the contributions of their country towards the growth and development of their culture, literature and spiritual heritage, they are anxious to see their ancestral land once more restored to its pristine glory.
These truths to be the self- evident, Arakanese adopts religion in their totality and ever since has been giving them as a consummate taste of spiritual life. Buddhism is the religion of the mainstream of the people of Arakan, and it is pervading force in Arakanese society. The propound influence of religion can be seen in Arakanese life-style, mannerism, tradition, character, art, architecture, language, and all other aspects of the Arakanese culture. Religion has become to integrate in providing basis unity of Arakanese people that unfold itself as a creative force that inspires them to higher goals of achievement. How Arakanese had decisively upheld Buddhism and how they were impressed by Buddha's teaching that is to the Arakanese Buddhism means their entire life, and fulfillment---holding near and dear to them---while Arakan to be very truly is the Land of the Great Image, deserving its blessed legacy of Buddha.
References:
San Shwe Bu, U. Legend of the early Aryan Settlement in Arakan, Journal of Burma
Research Society, Rangoon, Vol-II-1921.
Rakhine Prene Phritsaingthamaing, Vol.I-II-III. 1984.
The Economic Treasure Trove of the Arakan state, Rangoon, 1979.
Aung Tha Oo, U. History of Rakhine,
Collis, Maurice, The Land of the Great Image, London, 1943.
Forchahmmer, Dr. The Arakan, Rangoon, 1891.
Pandi, U. Mahapyinnyakyaw Shoute Htome (Burmese) Rangoon, Hanthawaddy Press.
Johnston. E.H. Some Sanskrit Inscriptions of Arakan, BSOAS, XI, 1944.
San Tha Aung, U. The Buddhist Art of Ancient Arakan, Rangoon, 1979.
Pandi, U. Dhanyawaddy Razzawinthit (Burmese) Ranggon, Pyidawtha Press, 1940.
Tun Shwe Khine, Ancient cities of Arakan, Rangoon, 1985.
Tun Shwe Khine, History of Arakan Mahamuni, Rangoon, 1991.
D.G. E. Hall, A History of Southeast Asia, London, 1981.
U Shwe Zan, The Golden Mrauk-U (An ancient capital of Rakhine) Yangon, 1994
Gutman. P. Ancient Arakan, (Ph.D.Thesis) Australian National University, 1976.
Samuel Beal, The Life of Hien-Tsian, New Delhi, 1973.
W.S. Desai, A Pageant of Burmese History, India, 1961.
Chan Htwan Oung. The Mahamuni Shrine in Arakan.
San Shwe Bu, U. The Story of Mahamuni, JBRS, VI 1916.
Kawithara, Dhyanawaddy Ashin. Raakhine Aahraidawbon, (Palm-leaf) 1778.
Nirranjan Ray, Theravada Buddhism in Burma, University of Calcutta, 1946
Arthur Phare. A History of Burma, London, 1967.
Trevor Ling, Buddhism: Imperialism and War, London, 1979.
U Tha Hla, The Rakhaing, Vol.1. No.7, 2000.
Elephant, Slaves and Rubies - Arakan's Place in the trade network of the Bay of Bengal
Elephant, Slaves and Rubies - Arakan's Place in the trade network of the Bay of Bengal by Dr. Jacques P. Leider
Dr. Jacques P. Leider
12/28/2008
Preliminary remarks
In the context of research on the trade network of the Bay of Bengal as well as in the wider frame of Southeast Asian studies, Arakan's place has largely remained a blank space in our knowledge due to a lack of studies on this Western province of Myanmar. But the regional importance of the kingdom during the XVIth. and XVIIth. centuries makes it a basic requirement to appreciate the role of trade in the general frame of its political and cultural evolution.
Beside the more evident reasons related to its own destiny, Arakan's trade is a subject worth to be studied for several other reasons.
It appears as a major aspect of the relations between Myanmar proper, that means especially the state-formations in the Irrawaddy valley, and Arakan. In the recent research on the Portuguese presence in the Bay of Bengal (e.g. Subrahmanyam, Guedes), Arakan has been mentioned as a major place of Portuguese activities. Though the Portuguese are mostly considered to have been mercenaries and pirates, trade was not absent from their occupations as we will see. Looking at the relationship between trade and kingship, Arakan, whose case has been compared with maritime states in Indonesia, is also a quite peculiar case, that deserves due observation and analysis.
Some scholars, leaving aside the task of any thorough study, have admitted as an undoubtful fact, that trade in Arakan must have been flourishing, as the kingdom rose to its prominent height since the end of the XVIth. century. In fact, the situation seems to be a little bit more complicate. This paper intends to provide a brief outline of Arakan's place in the trade of the bay of Bengal covering the different aspects to which we need to pay attention, and focusing especially on questions of research and analysis connected into the network of the bay, in a second step, the interest of traders in Arakan will be highlighted.
(1). Arakan's integration into the network of the Bay of Bengal
Most things that can be assuringly said on Arkan's trade before the British conquest in 1825 are related to the XVIIth. or XVIIIth. century, because most of our sources date from mid-XVIIth. to early XIXth. century. TO correctly appreciate information is particularly difficult, because sources are scarce and vague. Extrapolations are risky, for the simple reason that Arakan was a major regional power up to 1670, but steadily lost its prominent role during the XVIIIth. century. In early XIXth. century reports (e.g. Foley, Paton, Comstock), Arakan appears as area where hardly any trade was pursued and the majority of the population lived basically in autarky.
Beside its general hypotheses, this paper claims to make relevant statements for the period between the early XVIth. century and the end of the XVIIth. centuries. In the second decade of the XVIth. century, Tome Pires mentions the presence of Arakanese traders in Malaka and the presence of Indian and Mon traders in Mrauk-U1. At the end of the XVIIth. century, having visited the area probably around 1690, the Scottish captain Alexander Hamilton writes that Arakan formerly made a certain figure of trade. Between this first mention in a Western source and the one which reflects on a revolved past extend roughly 180 years which encompass Arakan's most active part in the socio-political development of the north-eastern area of the Bay of Bengal.
Why was Arakan particularly strongly integrated during that time? Which factors were favoring that integration?
Generally, it should be recalled, that from the start of the XVth to the XVIIth century, South Asian and Southeast Asian trade took advantage from the economic boom that marked the economic life of the whole area. Arakan was not an exception to this prosperous state of commercial activities.
The most important reason was the rise of the Mrauk U dynasty whose kings were overall favourable to the expansion of trade. The first mention of the presence of foreign traders in Mrauk U in Arakanese sources, dates from the mid of the XVIth. century. The numbers of their ships are hailed by the Arakanese chronicler as a mark of the glorious reign of King Mong Ba (1531-1553). In a letter, probably written around 1519, to the king of Portugal, the Arakanese king invites the Portuguese to visit his kingdom for trade and kindly assures protection to them. About hundred years later, we can find similar instances in relation to the Dutch traders of the VOC. It was this mentality of oppresses that invited the favourable judgement of British colonial writers like Maurice Collis, D.G.E. Hall or G.Harvey on Arakanese kings.
The fact that the Arakanese kings were strongly inclined to the furthering of trade can be related to two reasons. On one side, trade in luxury items provided the court with all the prestigious goods that heightened the outer appearance of the palace and its celebrations. The well know account of the Augustine father Manrique, for all its inaccuracies and exaggerations, provides us with a general picture what the splendour of the court of Mrauk U must have been in the middle of the XVIIth. century. On the other side, trade assured the court of a regular income in taxes and offered a vast field for the king's own commercial interests. Royal monopolies on buying and selling goods (as documented by Dutch sources) made the king the most important trader in the kingdom. It has to be assumed that the revenue generated by trade was largely used to fuel the military expansion and the security policy of Arakan's kings during Arakan's great century (ca. 1570-1670): a permanent fleet, garrisons, formidable defence-works around the capital city, salaries for foreign mercenaries.
In any way, a reflection on Arakan's trade conveys the impression that the relationship between Arakan's kingship and the development of trade in the country was detrimental to both.
Looking at the map, we might define three circles for Arakan's trade relations. The outer circle extends in the West to the Maldive islands, from where Arakan imported the cowries, to be used as a conventional means of paying. To the east, this circle might vaguely be extended to Malacca, Aceh and Java. A medium circle includes the Coromandel (Eastern) coast of India and the lower part of Myanmar. It involved especially the ports of Masulipatam and Pulicat and probably some mirror Indian ports. The inner circle is formed by Arakan's relations with Bengal, especially southeastern Bengal and Upper Burma. It can be easily seen, that most of this trade was seaborne trade. While the vaguely defined outer circle extends to the Indian Ocean, the medium and inner circle, the more relevant ones, spread out to a vast area of the Bay of Bengal. Though Arakan's trade was largely maritime trade, an important axe was its land connection to the Burmese heartland in Upper Myanmar, the so-called trans-arakanese trade.
The general nature of the trade from and to Arakan fits better into the description of Van Leur's peddling coastal trade in Indonesian waters than into the picture of enterprising South-Indian merchants or Bengal Muslim trade investors sending their merchantmen abroad. One can possibly assume that there was not necessarily a single connection between one port in Arakan and one other port, Indian or Burmese, but a connecting relation between several ports.
Exact trade relations are not well known before the end of In the XVIth. century. More precisely though, the following 'roads' can be named. The Portuguese had at least during some years in the middle of the XVIth. century a carreira voyage between San Tome and Chittagong. In the XVIIth. century, regular (that would mean, on an annual basis) connections existed with Masulipatam, the major outlet of Golconda, and further south, Pulicat. The two ports were relevant for the Muslim traders as well as for more sporadic contacts with the Dutch factors there. The transarakanese roads involved the passes over the Arakan Roma; there were three major passes: (1) the one starting from Am, a market town on the Am River, reaching Na phe, or Maphe on the eastern side, from where the Irrawaddy could be reached following the Man River; (2) the Talak pass crosses the Roma further north from the Am road and the Mun River can be followed before turning up north to Salin and Sinbyu; (3) leaving Arakan from Taungkut, one reaches Kama on the western bank of the Irrawaddy.
From Am, traders went on by boat to the sea and Mrauk U, Chittagong, or any major destination in Bengal could be reached by sailing along the coastline and following rivers.
Though one would assume, that there were regular relations with the delta area as well, less can be said about Arakan's trade with Lower Myanmar than with upper Myanmar. We will see that the political background was one major reason that the kings of Arakan and Ava took an eager interest in the development of the Transarakanese trade.
The case of Chittagong needs a short departure from our subject due to the fact of its pretty complicate history during the XVIth. century and above all for the reason of its tremendous military and commercial importance for the Arakanese kings.
The port city had been conquered a first time by a Muslim general (Fakhrudhin) in 1373 and had later rather loosely formed part of the sultanate of Bengal. In the XVth. century, its southern part came under the attack of the Arakanese kings and at the beginning of the XVIth. century, it was the envy of the sultan and both the kings of Tripura and Arakan. While the king of Tripura (Dhanamanikya) possessed in 1513, the Arakanese took it some time later, only to be dispossessed of its control in 1517 by Nusrat, the sultan's heir. The Portuguese started to come to the area around 1516 and we have an excellent Portuguese description of Chittagong in 1521, when it was under Muslim government. The early Portuguese contacts with Arakan date from this period, but unfortunately the history of the Portuguese presence in the northeastern part of the Bay before 1600 has yet to be unraveled. Chittagong was conquered by king Mong Ba around 1539/1540, putting an end to prevailing anarchy in the area, but it was probably lost again to the Muslims at the end of his reign. A carreira voyage to Chittagong could thus have been to either to the sultan's or the king of Arakan's port!
The ultimate conquest of Chittagong by the Arakanese can be dated, according to my own estimates, around 1578, though the arguments for this hypothesis can not be expounded here. The Arakanese controlled the city until 1666, when it was taken by the Mughol governor.
Chittagong has been described by early Portuguese visitors as the entry to Bengal, a prosperous cosmopolitan city to where traders and mercenaries from all Asia flocked; father Manrique considers it a hundred years later as the entry to Arakan, a foremost commercial centre of tremendous interest for the kingdom. Just opposite the city, on the southern bank of the Karnaphuli river, was located a luso-asiatic settlement of Portuguese Christians, topazes (half-casts) and their slaves, known under the name of Dianga.
The second major port of Arakan was Mrauk U, that is the Capital City of Arakan. The exact location of the port facilities, called Bandel by the Dutch sources, was somewhere south of the city, but the sources are not very clear on the issue and my enquiries in Arakan itself have yet been unfruitful. The description of Manrique and the far more reliable description of Mrauk U and its surroundings by a Dutch doctor, Wouter Schouten, who lived for four months in Arakan's capital (1660-1661), show us that the population was very numerous and the general prosperity had reached a remarkable level. The fact that the overall majority of the Arakanese live in the valleys of the Kaladan, Lemro and Mayu, is equally well demonstrated by modern statistics.
A major question of research pertains to the relationship between Bengal and Arakan. The study of the political relationship between the two areas would even suggest that there was no commerce at all, as there reigned bitter enmity and rivalry for decades. When Manrique arrived in Arakan, he reports that for seven years (that means between 1622 and 1629, the beginning of the reign of king Thirithudhamma Raza) no catholic priest had been able to cross the gulf for the reason that war had prevailed and no Bengal ship was secure while running into an Arakanese war-vessel. On the other side, Luso-asiatic slave traders deported men and women from eastern Bengal, dragging them ruthlessly into slavery and sold them at the ports of Balasore, Pipli and Hugli. Beside popular Bengal sources, vivid descriptions of this trade are found in Schouten's travelogue and in Berniers memories. As this trade went on for decades and as Muslim traders from all over Asia came freely to Mrauk U, one could hardly pretend - as has been suggested by Indian historians- that the Portuguese presence and Arakan's aggressive policy were a major impediment to trade in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal. As our knowledge is yet diffuse, any kind of generalization is blurring the view, which should be refocused on the study of the varying political conditions throughout the seventeenth century.
(2). The foreign traders in Arakan
It seems pretty clear that most of the trade done in Arakan was handled by foreigners. The biggest traders' community was the Muslims from India. Pires mentions the presence of Kling traders at the beginning of the XVIth. century, but later Muslims appears prominently. There presence is probably the most undervalued factor as regards- generally speaking- the Muslim presence and their impact in Arakan. Their part in the trade relations of Arakan with the rest of Asia was probably more relevant for the general state of the country than rather cultural aspects (like numismatics, Muslim title or the presence of eunuchs) that have been repeatedly boasted as proofs of a Muslim influence on the court of Arakan. Muslim trade interests in Arakan were firmly established at the end of the XVIth. century. There was at the time an open rivalry with the Portuguese diaspora vying for the king's favours. When Pegu was conquered by the troops of the prince of Taungngu and his Arakanese allies and pillaged, Syriam remained as the major territorial boon for the Arakanese (around 1600). The fact that king Mong Razagri rather trusted the Portuguese to revive the activities of the port is underscored by the fact that he let the port in the hands of de Brito who some two years later betrayed him and engaged in a dubious policy of conciliating the Arakanese king while fostering his own ambitions. By Portuguese sources around 1607, we know that the Muslim merchants at Mrauk U had been strongly opposed to the move of the Arakanese king who seemed to unduly favor the Portuguese interests.
According to Manrique, the Muslim traders went to Bengal, Masulipatam, Martaban (Tenasserim), Aceh and Java, defining thus about the whole area of what Arakan's trade was made of. Schouten further mentions traders from Surat and Coromandel, who did not only do trade, but were moneylenders and brokers as well. Schouten's remark that the Muslim traders were not settling in the country but came there only to do their business, evidently rises the question of an existing Muslim community identifying itself with the trade in and out of the country.
With most likely the exception of the handling of the slave in Arakan itself, the Muslim traders were responsible for the import and export of most trade items.
Which were the items traded?
It is important to note that a large share of Arakan's trade happened to be transit goods. A major trade item were the rubies coming from Ava over the passes. Though a sizable number of rubies might have ended at the court of Arakan, most rubies were re-exported to all over India, as sources tell us (again Tome Pires is the first to mention the fact!). At the time that de Brito had virtually closed the outbound trade of the northern and central plain in the first decade of the XVIIth. century, rubies could be easier exported through Arakan. The kind of agreement that the lord of Nyaung-yam (father of the future king Anaukphetlun) had striken in 1603 with Mong Razagri of keeping the road over the Roma secure, testifies to the sensible issue of cross-border trade and the repercussions of its interruptions. The arrival of 'transarakanese' rubies is for instance certified by English sources at Masulipatam in the XVIIth. century. Even when the kingdom declined, Muslim traders kept on striking good deals while buying precious stones in Arakan, states Hamilton. It seems also that precious stones had been available in large quantities lately after the death of Shah Shuja, the political refugee from India who had brought his treasuries to Arakan and lost them while his guard tried a coup against the royal palace in early 1661. Other less valuable trade items like wax, lacquer boxes, animal skins, buffalo horns and ropes, mentioned in various reports on the country up to the nineteenth century, were probably local products and made up another part of the countries exports. The export of locally produced rough cotton textiles was limited. The Dutch bought them for clothing their slaves.
English and Dutch sources of the XVIIth. century mention the export of tame and highly prized elephants and ivory to India and Persia.
The presence of European traders, especially Portuguese, in Arakan is acknowledged, but in fact little is known on these mostly petty traders.
One activity of trade seems to have been firmly in the hands of the Luso-asiatic community; it is well confirmed by Father Manrique, Bernier and Schouten: this is the slave trade. Beside regular attacks of the Arakanese navy against Mogul outposts, which tended to become rare after the period of the Arakanese wrrrior-kings (1571-1624), raiding the rivers of south and southeastern Bengal with rapid rowing-boats, capturing whoever they could get and reselling these poor people on the markets of Chittagong, Mrauk u or on the open sea was the major occupation of the male population of Dianga. Though one can not elaborate on the whole impact of this trade, its usefulness for the Arakanese kingship was considerable. The effect of terror it created upon the mind of the Bengal country people was a long-lasting effect that could be termed as defensive psychological warfare. One might recall that the Arakanese had systematically depopulated the northern parts of Chittagong up to the Feni River. On the other side, the workforce, as the king could choose the most qualified slaves (handicraft, artists) for his own needs. Others were sold as an agricultural labour force. Based on Manrique and some later sources, one can assume a varying average of 1500 to 5000 slaves a year. Slaves were thus a major trade item and, in terms of productivity, a not negligible contribution to the country's workforce. Slaves were also a major export item for the Dutch
The Dutch played at least for a certain time a prominent role in Arakan's trade, as we know since D.G.E. Hall's study on the Dutch presence in Arakan. The Dutch presence in Arakan is nevertheless older than is suggested by Hall's articles of 1936 that was limited on an analysis of written sources. Current research in Holland will probably change our perception of Dutch trade in Arakan and hopefully also of our understanding of Arakanese history. Dutch ships had helped to beat off the famous Portuguese attack of Goan ships allied to the adventurer Tibau on Mrauk U. Their presence grew stronger after 1624 with the Mrauk U trading post and demand for slaves was running high up to 1645, when the post was closed. Between 1641 and 1645, a special tax had to paid per slave and only non-qualified slaves could be sold to the Dutch. When the Dutch post reopened in 1653, slaves played only a minor role. The Dutch finally retreated from Arakan under the political pressure of the Mogul governor of Bengal at the eve of the attack on Chittagong (1665). In 1666, to the loss of Chittagong, one of the pillars of their military power in the area, the Arakanese thus lost also a major trading partner.
The other major item that the Dutch bought was rice. The sale of rice was a monopoly of the king. It is difficult to know if rice was exported on a regular basis or only if exceeding rice provisions were available. Rice and slaves were brought to Batavia where the last ones were in urgent demand on the plantations and rice a necessary staple. Little is still known on the export of rice to India.
Dutch sources also mention the export of indigo, but the Dutch themselves only bought a limited amount of it. It would be interesting to know how much naval construction played a role in exports, as notably Chittagong was famous for the building of boats.
The foremost imports to Arakan were the textiles from India; these were again partly re-exported to upper Myanmar. Iron was imported from India and Japan. Our sources do not account for the high number of artillery pieces that the King of Arakan had. Far-reaching questions arise also on the behalf of the export/import of gold and silver. Arakanese silver coins from the seventeenth century are a well-known proof to the prosperity of the Kingdom in these times. Did the silver come mainly from India or from the eastern regions?
Very little is known on native traders. The presence of Arakanese traders living peacefully in Dhaka is certified in the second half of the eighteenth century, but up to now, I have no proof of their earlier activities, though we might evidently assume that Arakanese traders were active on the interior markets. The same problem of a lack of sources pertains to Burmese or Mon traders. The presence of Mon traders has been mentioned by Pires, but beside his testimony and the general statement that the Mons played an important part in the Arakanese royal guard after an important number of them had been deported to Arakan, following the conquest of Pegu, little can be said.
As I have shown in an article on the Am road, Shan traders have been active with their buffalo caravans on the mountain roads, notably the Am road, after the Burmese conquest of 1785. Perhaps this was in fact the continuation of what had been going on for decades.
Conclusion
Looking at Arakan's place in the Bay of Bengal, two things have to be firmly stressed. Arakan had no trade items that were of an indispensable or such enviable nature, so that trade would have been naturally flowing to the country. For the kings, trade was an important and even vital issue and they tried to favor it to reap its benefits as much as they possibly could. One should not forget that the court was at the same time a major consumer of luxury goods and as such vital to the continuity of a business atmosphere in the city. The dependence on a class of foreign merchants and some definite advantages for the trading partners made the trade rather volatile and a precarious issue. Political conditions, especially the loss of Chittagong in 1666, the mounting power of Mugol Bengal and the growing strength of the triumph of the dynasty of Alaungphaya, brought about an increasing degree of political stress at the center of the kingdom. External trade collapsed quite fast when internal turmoil was merely followed by weak kings barely able to uphold their hold of power (in the XVIIIth. century).
Bibliography
Bhattachaya Bhisvar 1927. 'Bengali Influence in Arakan', Bengal Past and Present, 33: 139-144.
Blackmore Thaung 1985. Catalogue of the Burney Parabeiks in the India office Library. London. 120p.
Bouchon, Genevieve & Thomaz Luis F. 1988. Voyage dans les deltas du Gange et de I'Irraouaddy 1521, Paris, EHESS (Collection du Centre d'Etudes portugaises).
Candamalalankara 1931. Rakhaing yazawin (Vol. 2). Mandalay.
Chijis, J.A., van der (ed.) 1885-1900. Dutch-Register gehouden in't Casteel Batavia 1602-1811, Batavia and The Hague.
Collis, Maurice 1925. 'Arakan's place in the civilization of the Bay', Journal of the Burma Research Society XV, 1.
Comstock Rev. G.S. 1859. 'Notes on Arakan', Journal of the American Oriental Society 1: 219-258.
De Jonge, J.K.J. 1865. De Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indie (1595-1610), 's-Gravenhage.
Foley, William 1835. 'Journal of a Tour through the Island of Rambree, with a Geological Sketch of the Country, and Brief Account of the Customs etc. of its inhabitants', Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 4.
Guedes Ana Marques 1994. Interferencia et Integracao dos Portugueses na Birmania c. 1580-1530. Lisbon.
Habibullah, A.B.M. 1945. 'Arakan in the Pre-History of Bengal', Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Letters 11).
Hall, D.G.E. 1936. 'Studies in Dutch Relations with Arakan in the Seventeenth Century', JBRS 26: 1-31.
Lieberman, Victor 1980. 'Europeans, Trade and the Unification of Burma c. 1540-1620', Oriens Extremus 27.
Kawasarabhisiripawara Aggamahadhammarajadhirajaguru 1881. Dhanawati ayedawpon. Rangoon.
Leider, Jacques 1994. 'La route de Am. Contribution a I'etude d'une route terrestre entre la Birmanie et le golfe du Bengale', Journal Asistique 282: 335-370.
Manrique Sebastiao 1927. Travels of Fray Sebastien Manrique 1629-1643 vol. 1: Arakan. Oxford.
Methwold Will 1672. 'Relation des royaumes de Golconda, Tannassery, Pegu, Arecan, & autres Estatus situez sur les bords du Golfe de Bengale; & aussi du Commerce que les Anglois font en ces quartiers-la' [1619] in: Relation de divers voyages curieux (partie 1: 2-15). Paris.
Paton Charles 1828. 'Historical and Statistical Sketch of Arakan', Asiatick Researches 16: 353-381.
Prakash Om 1985. The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630-1720. Princeton.
Prakash Om 1994. Precious Metals and Commerce- The Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean Trade. Aldershot.
Qunungo, S.B. 1988. A History of Chittagong (vol. 1: From Ancient Times down to 1761), Chittagong, Signet Library.
Raychaudhuri Tapan 1962. Jan Company in Coromandel 1605-1690: A Study in the Interrelations of European Commerce and Traditional Economies. The Hague.
Reberts R.E. 1798. 'An Account of Arakan, Written at Islaamabad (Chittagong) in June 1777', Asistic Annual Register 1798-1799 (Miscellaneous Tracts: 160-166).
Smart R.B. (ed.) 1917. Burma Gazetteer Akyab District vol. A. Rangoon.
Subramanyam Sanjay 1990. Improvising Empire- Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal 1500-1700. New Delhi.
Subrahmanyam Sanjay 1993. The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500-1700- A Political and Economic History. London/New York.
Tha Htwan Aung 1927. Rakhaing Maharazawantawgyi. Sittwe/Mrohaung.
Tydd W.B. (ed.) 1962. Burma Gazetteer Sandoway District Vol.A. Rangoon.
Dr. Jacques P. Leider
12/28/2008
Preliminary remarks
In the context of research on the trade network of the Bay of Bengal as well as in the wider frame of Southeast Asian studies, Arakan's place has largely remained a blank space in our knowledge due to a lack of studies on this Western province of Myanmar. But the regional importance of the kingdom during the XVIth. and XVIIth. centuries makes it a basic requirement to appreciate the role of trade in the general frame of its political and cultural evolution.
Beside the more evident reasons related to its own destiny, Arakan's trade is a subject worth to be studied for several other reasons.
It appears as a major aspect of the relations between Myanmar proper, that means especially the state-formations in the Irrawaddy valley, and Arakan. In the recent research on the Portuguese presence in the Bay of Bengal (e.g. Subrahmanyam, Guedes), Arakan has been mentioned as a major place of Portuguese activities. Though the Portuguese are mostly considered to have been mercenaries and pirates, trade was not absent from their occupations as we will see. Looking at the relationship between trade and kingship, Arakan, whose case has been compared with maritime states in Indonesia, is also a quite peculiar case, that deserves due observation and analysis.
Some scholars, leaving aside the task of any thorough study, have admitted as an undoubtful fact, that trade in Arakan must have been flourishing, as the kingdom rose to its prominent height since the end of the XVIth. century. In fact, the situation seems to be a little bit more complicate. This paper intends to provide a brief outline of Arakan's place in the trade of the bay of Bengal covering the different aspects to which we need to pay attention, and focusing especially on questions of research and analysis connected into the network of the bay, in a second step, the interest of traders in Arakan will be highlighted.
(1). Arakan's integration into the network of the Bay of Bengal
Most things that can be assuringly said on Arkan's trade before the British conquest in 1825 are related to the XVIIth. or XVIIIth. century, because most of our sources date from mid-XVIIth. to early XIXth. century. TO correctly appreciate information is particularly difficult, because sources are scarce and vague. Extrapolations are risky, for the simple reason that Arakan was a major regional power up to 1670, but steadily lost its prominent role during the XVIIIth. century. In early XIXth. century reports (e.g. Foley, Paton, Comstock), Arakan appears as area where hardly any trade was pursued and the majority of the population lived basically in autarky.
Beside its general hypotheses, this paper claims to make relevant statements for the period between the early XVIth. century and the end of the XVIIth. centuries. In the second decade of the XVIth. century, Tome Pires mentions the presence of Arakanese traders in Malaka and the presence of Indian and Mon traders in Mrauk-U1. At the end of the XVIIth. century, having visited the area probably around 1690, the Scottish captain Alexander Hamilton writes that Arakan formerly made a certain figure of trade. Between this first mention in a Western source and the one which reflects on a revolved past extend roughly 180 years which encompass Arakan's most active part in the socio-political development of the north-eastern area of the Bay of Bengal.
Why was Arakan particularly strongly integrated during that time? Which factors were favoring that integration?
Generally, it should be recalled, that from the start of the XVth to the XVIIth century, South Asian and Southeast Asian trade took advantage from the economic boom that marked the economic life of the whole area. Arakan was not an exception to this prosperous state of commercial activities.
The most important reason was the rise of the Mrauk U dynasty whose kings were overall favourable to the expansion of trade. The first mention of the presence of foreign traders in Mrauk U in Arakanese sources, dates from the mid of the XVIth. century. The numbers of their ships are hailed by the Arakanese chronicler as a mark of the glorious reign of King Mong Ba (1531-1553). In a letter, probably written around 1519, to the king of Portugal, the Arakanese king invites the Portuguese to visit his kingdom for trade and kindly assures protection to them. About hundred years later, we can find similar instances in relation to the Dutch traders of the VOC. It was this mentality of oppresses that invited the favourable judgement of British colonial writers like Maurice Collis, D.G.E. Hall or G.Harvey on Arakanese kings.
The fact that the Arakanese kings were strongly inclined to the furthering of trade can be related to two reasons. On one side, trade in luxury items provided the court with all the prestigious goods that heightened the outer appearance of the palace and its celebrations. The well know account of the Augustine father Manrique, for all its inaccuracies and exaggerations, provides us with a general picture what the splendour of the court of Mrauk U must have been in the middle of the XVIIth. century. On the other side, trade assured the court of a regular income in taxes and offered a vast field for the king's own commercial interests. Royal monopolies on buying and selling goods (as documented by Dutch sources) made the king the most important trader in the kingdom. It has to be assumed that the revenue generated by trade was largely used to fuel the military expansion and the security policy of Arakan's kings during Arakan's great century (ca. 1570-1670): a permanent fleet, garrisons, formidable defence-works around the capital city, salaries for foreign mercenaries.
In any way, a reflection on Arakan's trade conveys the impression that the relationship between Arakan's kingship and the development of trade in the country was detrimental to both.
Looking at the map, we might define three circles for Arakan's trade relations. The outer circle extends in the West to the Maldive islands, from where Arakan imported the cowries, to be used as a conventional means of paying. To the east, this circle might vaguely be extended to Malacca, Aceh and Java. A medium circle includes the Coromandel (Eastern) coast of India and the lower part of Myanmar. It involved especially the ports of Masulipatam and Pulicat and probably some mirror Indian ports. The inner circle is formed by Arakan's relations with Bengal, especially southeastern Bengal and Upper Burma. It can be easily seen, that most of this trade was seaborne trade. While the vaguely defined outer circle extends to the Indian Ocean, the medium and inner circle, the more relevant ones, spread out to a vast area of the Bay of Bengal. Though Arakan's trade was largely maritime trade, an important axe was its land connection to the Burmese heartland in Upper Myanmar, the so-called trans-arakanese trade.
The general nature of the trade from and to Arakan fits better into the description of Van Leur's peddling coastal trade in Indonesian waters than into the picture of enterprising South-Indian merchants or Bengal Muslim trade investors sending their merchantmen abroad. One can possibly assume that there was not necessarily a single connection between one port in Arakan and one other port, Indian or Burmese, but a connecting relation between several ports.
Exact trade relations are not well known before the end of In the XVIth. century. More precisely though, the following 'roads' can be named. The Portuguese had at least during some years in the middle of the XVIth. century a carreira voyage between San Tome and Chittagong. In the XVIIth. century, regular (that would mean, on an annual basis) connections existed with Masulipatam, the major outlet of Golconda, and further south, Pulicat. The two ports were relevant for the Muslim traders as well as for more sporadic contacts with the Dutch factors there. The transarakanese roads involved the passes over the Arakan Roma; there were three major passes: (1) the one starting from Am, a market town on the Am River, reaching Na phe, or Maphe on the eastern side, from where the Irrawaddy could be reached following the Man River; (2) the Talak pass crosses the Roma further north from the Am road and the Mun River can be followed before turning up north to Salin and Sinbyu; (3) leaving Arakan from Taungkut, one reaches Kama on the western bank of the Irrawaddy.
From Am, traders went on by boat to the sea and Mrauk U, Chittagong, or any major destination in Bengal could be reached by sailing along the coastline and following rivers.
Though one would assume, that there were regular relations with the delta area as well, less can be said about Arakan's trade with Lower Myanmar than with upper Myanmar. We will see that the political background was one major reason that the kings of Arakan and Ava took an eager interest in the development of the Transarakanese trade.
The case of Chittagong needs a short departure from our subject due to the fact of its pretty complicate history during the XVIth. century and above all for the reason of its tremendous military and commercial importance for the Arakanese kings.
The port city had been conquered a first time by a Muslim general (Fakhrudhin) in 1373 and had later rather loosely formed part of the sultanate of Bengal. In the XVth. century, its southern part came under the attack of the Arakanese kings and at the beginning of the XVIth. century, it was the envy of the sultan and both the kings of Tripura and Arakan. While the king of Tripura (Dhanamanikya) possessed in 1513, the Arakanese took it some time later, only to be dispossessed of its control in 1517 by Nusrat, the sultan's heir. The Portuguese started to come to the area around 1516 and we have an excellent Portuguese description of Chittagong in 1521, when it was under Muslim government. The early Portuguese contacts with Arakan date from this period, but unfortunately the history of the Portuguese presence in the northeastern part of the Bay before 1600 has yet to be unraveled. Chittagong was conquered by king Mong Ba around 1539/1540, putting an end to prevailing anarchy in the area, but it was probably lost again to the Muslims at the end of his reign. A carreira voyage to Chittagong could thus have been to either to the sultan's or the king of Arakan's port!
The ultimate conquest of Chittagong by the Arakanese can be dated, according to my own estimates, around 1578, though the arguments for this hypothesis can not be expounded here. The Arakanese controlled the city until 1666, when it was taken by the Mughol governor.
Chittagong has been described by early Portuguese visitors as the entry to Bengal, a prosperous cosmopolitan city to where traders and mercenaries from all Asia flocked; father Manrique considers it a hundred years later as the entry to Arakan, a foremost commercial centre of tremendous interest for the kingdom. Just opposite the city, on the southern bank of the Karnaphuli river, was located a luso-asiatic settlement of Portuguese Christians, topazes (half-casts) and their slaves, known under the name of Dianga.
The second major port of Arakan was Mrauk U, that is the Capital City of Arakan. The exact location of the port facilities, called Bandel by the Dutch sources, was somewhere south of the city, but the sources are not very clear on the issue and my enquiries in Arakan itself have yet been unfruitful. The description of Manrique and the far more reliable description of Mrauk U and its surroundings by a Dutch doctor, Wouter Schouten, who lived for four months in Arakan's capital (1660-1661), show us that the population was very numerous and the general prosperity had reached a remarkable level. The fact that the overall majority of the Arakanese live in the valleys of the Kaladan, Lemro and Mayu, is equally well demonstrated by modern statistics.
A major question of research pertains to the relationship between Bengal and Arakan. The study of the political relationship between the two areas would even suggest that there was no commerce at all, as there reigned bitter enmity and rivalry for decades. When Manrique arrived in Arakan, he reports that for seven years (that means between 1622 and 1629, the beginning of the reign of king Thirithudhamma Raza) no catholic priest had been able to cross the gulf for the reason that war had prevailed and no Bengal ship was secure while running into an Arakanese war-vessel. On the other side, Luso-asiatic slave traders deported men and women from eastern Bengal, dragging them ruthlessly into slavery and sold them at the ports of Balasore, Pipli and Hugli. Beside popular Bengal sources, vivid descriptions of this trade are found in Schouten's travelogue and in Berniers memories. As this trade went on for decades and as Muslim traders from all over Asia came freely to Mrauk U, one could hardly pretend - as has been suggested by Indian historians- that the Portuguese presence and Arakan's aggressive policy were a major impediment to trade in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal. As our knowledge is yet diffuse, any kind of generalization is blurring the view, which should be refocused on the study of the varying political conditions throughout the seventeenth century.
(2). The foreign traders in Arakan
It seems pretty clear that most of the trade done in Arakan was handled by foreigners. The biggest traders' community was the Muslims from India. Pires mentions the presence of Kling traders at the beginning of the XVIth. century, but later Muslims appears prominently. There presence is probably the most undervalued factor as regards- generally speaking- the Muslim presence and their impact in Arakan. Their part in the trade relations of Arakan with the rest of Asia was probably more relevant for the general state of the country than rather cultural aspects (like numismatics, Muslim title or the presence of eunuchs) that have been repeatedly boasted as proofs of a Muslim influence on the court of Arakan. Muslim trade interests in Arakan were firmly established at the end of the XVIth. century. There was at the time an open rivalry with the Portuguese diaspora vying for the king's favours. When Pegu was conquered by the troops of the prince of Taungngu and his Arakanese allies and pillaged, Syriam remained as the major territorial boon for the Arakanese (around 1600). The fact that king Mong Razagri rather trusted the Portuguese to revive the activities of the port is underscored by the fact that he let the port in the hands of de Brito who some two years later betrayed him and engaged in a dubious policy of conciliating the Arakanese king while fostering his own ambitions. By Portuguese sources around 1607, we know that the Muslim merchants at Mrauk U had been strongly opposed to the move of the Arakanese king who seemed to unduly favor the Portuguese interests.
According to Manrique, the Muslim traders went to Bengal, Masulipatam, Martaban (Tenasserim), Aceh and Java, defining thus about the whole area of what Arakan's trade was made of. Schouten further mentions traders from Surat and Coromandel, who did not only do trade, but were moneylenders and brokers as well. Schouten's remark that the Muslim traders were not settling in the country but came there only to do their business, evidently rises the question of an existing Muslim community identifying itself with the trade in and out of the country.
With most likely the exception of the handling of the slave in Arakan itself, the Muslim traders were responsible for the import and export of most trade items.
Which were the items traded?
It is important to note that a large share of Arakan's trade happened to be transit goods. A major trade item were the rubies coming from Ava over the passes. Though a sizable number of rubies might have ended at the court of Arakan, most rubies were re-exported to all over India, as sources tell us (again Tome Pires is the first to mention the fact!). At the time that de Brito had virtually closed the outbound trade of the northern and central plain in the first decade of the XVIIth. century, rubies could be easier exported through Arakan. The kind of agreement that the lord of Nyaung-yam (father of the future king Anaukphetlun) had striken in 1603 with Mong Razagri of keeping the road over the Roma secure, testifies to the sensible issue of cross-border trade and the repercussions of its interruptions. The arrival of 'transarakanese' rubies is for instance certified by English sources at Masulipatam in the XVIIth. century. Even when the kingdom declined, Muslim traders kept on striking good deals while buying precious stones in Arakan, states Hamilton. It seems also that precious stones had been available in large quantities lately after the death of Shah Shuja, the political refugee from India who had brought his treasuries to Arakan and lost them while his guard tried a coup against the royal palace in early 1661. Other less valuable trade items like wax, lacquer boxes, animal skins, buffalo horns and ropes, mentioned in various reports on the country up to the nineteenth century, were probably local products and made up another part of the countries exports. The export of locally produced rough cotton textiles was limited. The Dutch bought them for clothing their slaves.
English and Dutch sources of the XVIIth. century mention the export of tame and highly prized elephants and ivory to India and Persia.
The presence of European traders, especially Portuguese, in Arakan is acknowledged, but in fact little is known on these mostly petty traders.
One activity of trade seems to have been firmly in the hands of the Luso-asiatic community; it is well confirmed by Father Manrique, Bernier and Schouten: this is the slave trade. Beside regular attacks of the Arakanese navy against Mogul outposts, which tended to become rare after the period of the Arakanese wrrrior-kings (1571-1624), raiding the rivers of south and southeastern Bengal with rapid rowing-boats, capturing whoever they could get and reselling these poor people on the markets of Chittagong, Mrauk u or on the open sea was the major occupation of the male population of Dianga. Though one can not elaborate on the whole impact of this trade, its usefulness for the Arakanese kingship was considerable. The effect of terror it created upon the mind of the Bengal country people was a long-lasting effect that could be termed as defensive psychological warfare. One might recall that the Arakanese had systematically depopulated the northern parts of Chittagong up to the Feni River. On the other side, the workforce, as the king could choose the most qualified slaves (handicraft, artists) for his own needs. Others were sold as an agricultural labour force. Based on Manrique and some later sources, one can assume a varying average of 1500 to 5000 slaves a year. Slaves were thus a major trade item and, in terms of productivity, a not negligible contribution to the country's workforce. Slaves were also a major export item for the Dutch
The Dutch played at least for a certain time a prominent role in Arakan's trade, as we know since D.G.E. Hall's study on the Dutch presence in Arakan. The Dutch presence in Arakan is nevertheless older than is suggested by Hall's articles of 1936 that was limited on an analysis of written sources. Current research in Holland will probably change our perception of Dutch trade in Arakan and hopefully also of our understanding of Arakanese history. Dutch ships had helped to beat off the famous Portuguese attack of Goan ships allied to the adventurer Tibau on Mrauk U. Their presence grew stronger after 1624 with the Mrauk U trading post and demand for slaves was running high up to 1645, when the post was closed. Between 1641 and 1645, a special tax had to paid per slave and only non-qualified slaves could be sold to the Dutch. When the Dutch post reopened in 1653, slaves played only a minor role. The Dutch finally retreated from Arakan under the political pressure of the Mogul governor of Bengal at the eve of the attack on Chittagong (1665). In 1666, to the loss of Chittagong, one of the pillars of their military power in the area, the Arakanese thus lost also a major trading partner.
The other major item that the Dutch bought was rice. The sale of rice was a monopoly of the king. It is difficult to know if rice was exported on a regular basis or only if exceeding rice provisions were available. Rice and slaves were brought to Batavia where the last ones were in urgent demand on the plantations and rice a necessary staple. Little is still known on the export of rice to India.
Dutch sources also mention the export of indigo, but the Dutch themselves only bought a limited amount of it. It would be interesting to know how much naval construction played a role in exports, as notably Chittagong was famous for the building of boats.
The foremost imports to Arakan were the textiles from India; these were again partly re-exported to upper Myanmar. Iron was imported from India and Japan. Our sources do not account for the high number of artillery pieces that the King of Arakan had. Far-reaching questions arise also on the behalf of the export/import of gold and silver. Arakanese silver coins from the seventeenth century are a well-known proof to the prosperity of the Kingdom in these times. Did the silver come mainly from India or from the eastern regions?
Very little is known on native traders. The presence of Arakanese traders living peacefully in Dhaka is certified in the second half of the eighteenth century, but up to now, I have no proof of their earlier activities, though we might evidently assume that Arakanese traders were active on the interior markets. The same problem of a lack of sources pertains to Burmese or Mon traders. The presence of Mon traders has been mentioned by Pires, but beside his testimony and the general statement that the Mons played an important part in the Arakanese royal guard after an important number of them had been deported to Arakan, following the conquest of Pegu, little can be said.
As I have shown in an article on the Am road, Shan traders have been active with their buffalo caravans on the mountain roads, notably the Am road, after the Burmese conquest of 1785. Perhaps this was in fact the continuation of what had been going on for decades.
Conclusion
Looking at Arakan's place in the Bay of Bengal, two things have to be firmly stressed. Arakan had no trade items that were of an indispensable or such enviable nature, so that trade would have been naturally flowing to the country. For the kings, trade was an important and even vital issue and they tried to favor it to reap its benefits as much as they possibly could. One should not forget that the court was at the same time a major consumer of luxury goods and as such vital to the continuity of a business atmosphere in the city. The dependence on a class of foreign merchants and some definite advantages for the trading partners made the trade rather volatile and a precarious issue. Political conditions, especially the loss of Chittagong in 1666, the mounting power of Mugol Bengal and the growing strength of the triumph of the dynasty of Alaungphaya, brought about an increasing degree of political stress at the center of the kingdom. External trade collapsed quite fast when internal turmoil was merely followed by weak kings barely able to uphold their hold of power (in the XVIIIth. century).
Bibliography
Bhattachaya Bhisvar 1927. 'Bengali Influence in Arakan', Bengal Past and Present, 33: 139-144.
Blackmore Thaung 1985. Catalogue of the Burney Parabeiks in the India office Library. London. 120p.
Bouchon, Genevieve & Thomaz Luis F. 1988. Voyage dans les deltas du Gange et de I'Irraouaddy 1521, Paris, EHESS (Collection du Centre d'Etudes portugaises).
Candamalalankara 1931. Rakhaing yazawin (Vol. 2). Mandalay.
Chijis, J.A., van der (ed.) 1885-1900. Dutch-Register gehouden in't Casteel Batavia 1602-1811, Batavia and The Hague.
Collis, Maurice 1925. 'Arakan's place in the civilization of the Bay', Journal of the Burma Research Society XV, 1.
Comstock Rev. G.S. 1859. 'Notes on Arakan', Journal of the American Oriental Society 1: 219-258.
De Jonge, J.K.J. 1865. De Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indie (1595-1610), 's-Gravenhage.
Foley, William 1835. 'Journal of a Tour through the Island of Rambree, with a Geological Sketch of the Country, and Brief Account of the Customs etc. of its inhabitants', Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 4.
Guedes Ana Marques 1994. Interferencia et Integracao dos Portugueses na Birmania c. 1580-1530. Lisbon.
Habibullah, A.B.M. 1945. 'Arakan in the Pre-History of Bengal', Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Letters 11).
Hall, D.G.E. 1936. 'Studies in Dutch Relations with Arakan in the Seventeenth Century', JBRS 26: 1-31.
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