The pagodas at Mrauk-U pagodas are part of modern-day Rakhine identity.īeginning in 9th and 10th centuries, the people from Irrawaddy valley began migrating out, crossing the Arakan Mountains and settling in what is now Rakhine State. After 1991, the Burmese government changed the official English name of the ethnic group to Rakhine, as part of a broader effort to indigenize the country's English ethnonyms and place names. By the late 19th century, British authorities adopted the ethnonym Arakanese. The word's etymology is likely to derive from Magadha, the name of an ancient Buddhist kingdom.
īy 1585, European, Persian, and Bengali accounts began describing the Rakhine and Buddhist groups as the Magh and its derivatives (e.g., Mogh, Mugh, Mog, etc.). The ethnonym reflected their common ancestral kinship ties with the Buddhist-professing Bamar, with whom the Rakhine identified. 'great Mranma / Myanma'), as attested by contemporaneous Burmese and foreign sources. By this period, the Bamar began to call the Rakhine the Myanmagyi (မြန်မာကြီး lit. The word, which is also cognate with Bamar and is the Rakhine pronunciation of "Myanmar," continues to be used by their descendants in Bangladesh, who are known as the Marma. īetween the 17th and 18th centuries, the Rakhine began calling themselves Mranma (မြန်မာ) and its derivatives, as attested by texts like the Rakhine Minrazagri Ayedaw Sadan and the Dhanyawaddy Ayedawbon. Some Rakhine inhabitants now prefer the alternative spelling of ရက္ခိုင်. Arthur Phayre traces the etymology to the Sanskrit or Pali words for 'monster' or 'demon' ( rākṣasa and rakkhasa) respectively, which is more likely. U Kala's Maha Yazawin traces the word's etymology to Alaungsithu's conquest of the region during Pagan era, but epigraphic evidence to support the underlying theory remains scant.
The word is extant to the mid-11th century, appearing on a pillar inscription at Shite-thaung Temple, and also appears in European, Persian, and Ceylonese accounts by the 15th century. Rakhine (less commonly spelt Rakhaing) is the contemporary ethnonym and name of the region in Rakhine, Burmese, and English today. Smaller Rakhine communities exist in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts and in India, where they are known as the Marma and Mog peoples respectively. They constitute approximately 5.53% or more of Myanmar's total population, but no accurate census figures exist. The Rakhine ( Burmese and Rakhine: ရခိုင်လူမျိုး, Rakhine pronunciation:, Burmese pronunciation: ), also known as the Arakanese, are a Southeast Asian ethnic group in Myanmar (Burma) forming the majority along the coastal region of present-day Rakhine State (formerly called Arakan), although Rakhine communities also exist throughout the country, particularly in Ayeyarwady and Yangon Regions.
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