The life of U Pon Nya

လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ တစ္လေလာက္က စာၾကည့္တိုက္မွာ စာအုပ္သြားရွာရင္း ေဒါက္တာ ထင္ေအာင္ အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာသို႔ ဘာသာျပန္ဆို ေရးသားထားတဲ့ ျမန္မာျပဇာတ္မ်ားဆိုတဲ့ စာအုပ္ကိုေတြ႔လို႔ ငွားလာလိုက္ပါတယ္။ ငွားလာတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းရင္းက အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာျပန္စာအုပ္မို႔လည္းမဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ စာေရးသူက ေဒါက္တာထင္ေအာင္မို႔လည္း မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ အမွန္အတိုင္းေျပာရရင္ စာအုပ္မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးေပၚက Oxford University Press ဆိုတဲ့ စာသားေၾကာင့္ပါ။ ျမန္မာေက်ာင္းသားတစ္ေယာက္ေရးတဲ့ စာအုပ္ကို ေအာက္စဖို႔ဒ္တကၠသိုလ္က ထုတ္ထားတာကို ဖတ္ဖူးေအာင္ဖတ္ခ်င္တဲ့ ဆႏၵေလးလည္းပါတယ္ဆိုတာကိုလည္း ၀န္ခံပါတယ္။ စာအုပ္ထဲက အေၾကာင္းအရာေတြကို မဖတ္ရေသးဘူး၊ တစ္မ်က္ႏွာပဲရွိတဲ့ စာအုပ္နိဒါန္းကို ဖတ္ၿပီးတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ အဂၤလိပ္-ျမန္မာ အဘိဓာန္စာအုပ္ကို ၄-၅ ခါေလာက္ လွန္လိုက္ရတဲ့အတြက္ နည္းနည္းေတာ့ စိတ္ညစ္သြားတာအမွန္ပါပဲ။ နဂိုကမွ အဂၤလိပ္စာက ခပ္ေကာင္းေကာင္းဆိုေတာ့ ငါေတာ့ ဒီစာအုပ္ကို ဘယ္ေလာက္ၾကာေအာင္ ဖတ္ရဦးမယ္မသိဘူးဆိုတဲ့ စစ္မေရာက္ခင္ျမားကုန္တဲ့စိတ္ကေလး ျဖစ္မိတာလည္း ၀န္ခံပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ေတာ့ အဆင္ေျပသြားပါတယ္။ စာအုပ္တစ္အုပ္လံုးကို မဖတ္ေတာ့ဘဲ ကၽြန္ေတာ္စိတ္၀င္စားတဲ့အေၾကာင္းအရာေတြကိုပဲ ေရြးၿပီး ဖတ္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီလိုစိတ္၀င္စားတဲ့ ျပဇာတ္ေတြကလည္း ျမန္မာလို ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ေကာင္းေကာင္းသိၿပီးသားေတြ မ်ားတဲ့အတြက္ အခ်ိဳ႕စာလံုးေတြဆိုရင္ အဘိဓာန္ၾကည့္စရာမလိုေတာ့ဘဲ ျမန္မာလိုသိထားတာနဲ႔ ဆက္စပ္ၿပီး ဖတ္သြားလိုက္တာ အေတာ္ကို အဆင္ေျပတာ ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။ အခ်ိဳ႕ကို တစ္ပုဒ္လံုးဖတ္ပါတယ္။ အခ်ိဳ႕ကိုေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ျမန္မာလိုသိၿပီးသား ႀကိဳက္တဲ့အပိုင္းေလးေတြကို အဂၤလိပ္လို ဘယ္လိုျပန္ေရးထားသလဲဆိုတာကို သိခ်င္လို႔ ဖတ္ပါတယ္။ အခ်ိဳ႕ကိုေတာ့ ဘယ္လိုနိဒါန္းဖြင့္ထားသလဲ ဆိုတာေလာက္ပဲ ဖတ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဖတ္ရင္းနဲ႔ ဖတ္ရင္းနဲ႔ ငါတို႔ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးေတြလည္း မေခပါလားဟလို႔ ဂုဏ္ယူေတြးေတြးရင္း အဲဒီလို ေရးထားတာေတြကို ခက္ခက္ခဲခဲ အဘိဓာန္အကူအညီနဲ႔ ဖတ္ေနရတဲ့ ကုိယ့္ကိုယ္ကုိလည္း အေတာ္ေလး ရွက္သြားမိပါတယ္။ အစစအရာရာ တိုးတက္ေနတဲ့အခုေခတ္ ပါရဂူေက်ာင္းသားေတြေရာ အဲဒီလို ေရးႏိုင္ၾကရဲ႕လားလို႔ မဆီမဆိုင္ ေတြးမိပါတယ္။ ပါရဂူဘြဲ႔ရေတြ၊ ပါရဂူေက်ာင္းသားေတြကို ေစာ္ကားလုိျခင္းမဟုတ္ပါ။ သူတုိ႔ေတြကိုလည္း ေဒါက္တာထင္ေအာင္လိုပဲ ေရးႏိုင္ေစခ်င္တဲ့ ဆႏၵသက္သက္ပါ။ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အတြက္ေတာ့ ျမန္မာေက်ာင္းသားေလး ေမာင္ထင္ေအာင္ ပါရဂူဘြဲ႔ယူစာတမ္းအတြက္ေရးတဲ့ ေအာက္စဖို႔ဒ္တကၠသိုလ္ထုတ္ ျမန္မာျပဇာတ္မ်ား စာအုပ္တစ္အုပ္ကို ဖတ္ဖူးတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ေျပာစရာတစ္ခုေတာ့ က်န္ခဲ့တာအျမတ္ပါပဲ။

စာအုပ္မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးမွာ ေရးထားတာက-
BURMESE DRAMA
MAUNG HTIN AUNG
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

အတြင္းပိုင္းမွာ ေရးထားတဲ့ ပံုႏွိပ္မွတ္တမ္းမွာ ေတြ႔ရတာက-
Oxford University Press, Amen House, London, E.C.4
First published       1937
Fourth impression  1957

အဲဒီစာအုပ္ထဲကမွ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ေက်ာင္းေနစဥ္က သင္ၾကားခဲ့ရတဲ့ ေရသည္ျပဇာတ္ရဲ႕ ဖခင္ႀကီး ဦးပုညအေၾကာင္း ေရးထားတဲ့ The Life of U Pon Nya ဆိုတဲ့ စာတစ္ပုဒ္ကို ထုတ္ႏုတ္ၿပီး တင္ေပးလိုက္ပါတယ္။
THE LIFE OF U PON NYA
U PON NYA was born about the year 1807. His father was a minor nobleman at the court of Prince Tharrawaddy, a younger brother of King Bagayidaw (who lost the war against the British), and the young boy was brought up under the patronage of the prince. He was a precocious child and was placed under the tutorship of the most learned monk of the day. The prince rebelled against his brother and became king in 1837. U Pon Nya, in the meantime, had become a monk. During the rebellion, his father fell fighting for the prince, and the new king wanted U Pon Nya to take his father's office, but the future dramatist preferred to remain a monk. King Tharrawaddy continued to consider himself as godfather to U Pon Nya, who therefore was in constant contact with the court. On the death of that king, his son Pagan ascended the throne, and U Pon Nya left the capital for the little town of Sale`, where he began to compose literary essays in about 1847. His essays and lyrics became immensely popular, and he came to be known all over the country as the 'Master of Sale`', by which name he is more commonly referred to. In 1850 he became a layman again, and was appointed a court poet at the court of Prince Kanaung, a brother of the reigning king, Pagan. In 1851 Burma went to war again with the British and lost some more territory. Prince Kanaung and his other brother, Mindon, rebelled against the half-mad king. Mindon became the new king and made peace with the British. Kanaung became the crown prince, and U Pon Nya his official poet. He was then already recognized by the nation as the foremost poet, scholar and essayist of the day. He wrote astrological works and won further fame as an astrologer. He believed that he was liable to die on the scaffold and asked for a proclamation by the king exempting him from punishment by death; otherwise he begged to leave the court for the monastery. The required proclamation was made. In about 1855 he wrote his first play, Paduma. In the next year the two brothers, the king and the prince, quarreled, and when the misunderstanding had been explained, U Pon Nya was ordered to write a play to celebrate the occasion, and The Water-seller was composed and presented. As reward, the king appointed him chief court-poet and created him lord of Ywazi village. He would have been made a ruling chief or official had he not been born with a crippled arm, because a man born with any defect in his limbs could not become a member of the ruling class. U Pon Nya took part in various court intrigues. Most of his plays had some hidden meaning that concerned the court, and they played an important part in the plots and counter-plots to decide who was to be heir, for though Kanaung was officially the heir, the king's sons did not accept him.
In 1865 Myingun and Myingondaing, two of the king's sons, decided to make a bid for the throne. They consulted U Pon Nya as to the most suitable time as foretold by the stars, and the poet told them that the next day at noon was the luckiest time for the rebellion. This connivance in a rebellion against his king and his master, Prince Kanaung, was a very disloyal and ungrateful act, because the fiery temper of the two princes was well known, and it was plain from the beginning that the rebellious sons intended to put to death at once their own father, and their uncle, who also happened to be the father-in-law of Myingun. U Pon Nya defended himself later by saying that he was compelled to give his opinion as to the most suitable time, because he was threatened with certain death. But he did not inform the king of the plot when the princes had left after promising him the highest rank of nobility; and though he might have been threatened with death at the beginning, he seemed to have been well content with the promised reward and quietly left the capital that night. The next day at noon, the rebellion broke out. The courts of justice where the crown prince and the wisest in the land were sitting in session were attacked, and the palace raided. The king escaped, but the crown prince and his fellow-judges were killed. The rebellion was put down the same afternoon, but by then the flower of the court and the nobility had perished. The two rebels escaped, Myingondaing to die of fever at Rangoon, and Myingun to retirement in French Indo-China. U Pon Nya was arrested and tried on a charge of  treason by the king himself, and though a sentence of death was clearly deserved, the king remembered the proclamation exempting the poet from punishment by death, and as he had a great admiration for the works of the dramatist, U Pon Nya was merely sent to the house of the governor of the city as a prisoner on parole. Unfortunately, the junior wives of the governor and the ladies at his court took too great an interest in the comfort of the prisoner, and the governor became extremely jealous. After three months of what he suspected to be romantic intrigues between his prisoner and his ladies, the governor decided to put U Pon Nya to death. So one night in 1866 the poet was secretly executed, and the body disposed of never to be discovered, under the orders of the governor. A few weeks after the secret execution, the king granted full pardon to U Pon Nya, believing him to be still alive. Only then was the truth discovered, and when the news was reported to the king, he said wearily: 'Alas, a dog has killed a man.'