Bamars Erotic

The Bamars are the dominant people of Myanmar, the group whose language became the country's lingua franca and whose name the state itself was anglicized from. Their heartland is the dry zone of central Myanmar — the Irrawaddy basin, the broad alluvial plain that runs from Mandalay south toward the delta — flanked on three sides by hill country occupied by other peoples. That geography matters: Bamar history is largely a story of a lowland rice-growing majority looking up at the Shan, Kachin, Chin, Karen and others in the surrounding highlands, and the modern Burmese state has spent most of its existence trying to negotiate, absorb, or fight that distinction.

The Burmese language is Sino-Tibetan, in the Tibeto-Burman branch — closer kin to Tibetan than to the Tai-Kadai tongues of neighboring Thailand or the Mon-Khmer languages spoken in pockets of the same country. It is tonal, written in a rounded script descended from a southern Indic alphabet, the curves famously a concession to writing on palm leaves that would split under straight lines. Sub-groups like the Intha of Inle Lake, the Danu, the Taungyo and the Yaw speak distinct varieties or related languages, and the Anglo-Burmese — the Eurasian community that grew up under British rule — sit somewhat apart, often Christian, often English-speaking, much reduced in number since independence.

Theravada Buddhism is the through-line. It arrived from Sri Lanka, took hold under King Anawrahta in eleventh-century Pagan, and has shaped Bamar civic life ever since. Most boys still go through shinbyu, the novitiation ceremony in which a child briefly enters monastic life — a rite as socially important as it is religious. The Sangha is a real political force; monks have led protests against military rule more than once. Underneath the orthodox Buddhist surface runs a parallel world of nat worship, the cult of thirty-seven spirits with their own shrines, mediums and festivals, a pre-Buddhist inheritance the Theravada establishment has never managed, and never really tried, to extinguish.

Daily Bamar culture leans on small things outsiders often miss: thanaka paste worn on the cheeks as cosmetic and sunscreen, the longyi wrapped sarong worn by men and women alike, mohinga fish soup eaten for breakfast, and a teahouse culture where political conversation has historically been conducted at low volume and in code.