TheIndosphere

An encyclopedia of Indian civilization.

BuddhistLate Medieval

Toungoo Empire

Also known as Taungoo dynasty

The Toungoo empire was the Burmese state built by the Toungoo dynasty in the sixteenth century, which under Bayinnaung conquered most of mainland Southeast Asia and, in a restored form ruling from Ava, lasted until 1752.

The rise of Toungoo

After the decline of the Pagan kingdom, Burma was divided for two centuries among the kingdom of Ava in the dry zone, the Mon kingdom of Hanthawaddy in the south, Arakan, and the Shan states. Toungoo, a small principality in the Sittaung valley, became a refuge for people fleeing the wars in the north in the early sixteenth century. Its ruler Mingyinyo built up its strength, and his son Tabinshwehti (r. 1530–1550) took the offensive. He conquered Hanthawaddy and made its capital, Pegu, his own in 1539, giving his kingdom access to the sea and its trade, and he employed Portuguese mercenaries and firearms. He attacked Ayutthaya in 1548 without success, and was assassinated in 1550.

Bayinnaung

Tabinshwehti's brother-in-law and general, Bayinnaung, restored the kingdom after his death and built the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. He conquered Ava and the Shan states, took Chiang Mai in 1558, and attacked Ayutthaya, which he took in 1564 and again, after a long siege, in 1569. Manipur and Lan Xang also submitted. He ruled through vassal kings bound by oaths, hostages and marriage, rather than direct administration, and he presented himself as a model Buddhist king, building pagodas, distributing scriptures and patronising monks across his empire. Pegu became a great city, described by European visitors as one of the richest in Asia.

His piety reached across the Bay of Bengal. When the Portuguese captured at Jaffna in 1560 an object venerated as the Buddha's tooth, Bayinnaung offered a very large ransom for it. The archbishop of Goa insisted that it be destroyed, and it was publicly ground up and burned. Bayinnaung later received from the king of Kotte in Sri Lanka a tooth presented as the genuine relic, and enshrined it at Pegu.

Collapse and restoration

Bayinnaung's empire depended on his personal authority. Under his son Nanda Bayin, the vassals rebelled; Ayutthaya under Naresuan regained independence from 1584, and by the 1590s the empire had collapsed, with Pegu sacked in 1599. Bayinnaung's son Nyaungyan and grandson Anaukpetlun rebuilt a smaller kingdom from the north, and in 1613 Anaukpetlun captured the Portuguese adventurer Filipe de Brito, who had set himself up at Syriam, and executed him. King Thalun moved the capital to Ava in the 1630s, closer to the dry-zone heartland, and ordered a detailed survey of the kingdom's people and revenues.

Fall

The restored Toungoo kingdom was stable for much of the seventeenth century but weakened in the eighteenth by raids from Manipur and revolts. In 1740 the Mon of the south revived the kingdom of Hanthawaddy, and in 1752 its forces took Ava and ended the dynasty. Within months, Alaungpaya, a village headman of Shwebo, rose against them, founding the Konbaung dynasty.

Further reading

  • Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
  • Gombrich, Richard F. Theravada Buddhism: A Social History. Routledge, 2006
  • Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004

See also

  • Buddhism — Buddhism is a religious and philosophical tradition founded in northern India in the 5th century BCE by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, centred on the Four Noble Truths and a path to liberation from suffering.

This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.