By Dr. Saw Mra Aung

THE Gan-gawmyaing Sardan (ကံ့ကော်မြိုင်စာတမ်း) is an anthology of essays called ‘ Asan-sar (အစမ်းစာ) in Myanmar. It is so called, for most of the essays included in it were written by the participants of the Gan-gaw-myaing Literary Talks (ကံ့ကော်မြိုင်စာပေဝိုင်း) which were frequently held in the Early 1960s on the estate of Yangon University, which is often likened to Gan-gawmyaing (Gan-gaw Forest).

The term ‘ Asan-sar’ in this context corresponds to the English term ‘ Essay’, whose French equivalent is ‘ Essai’ meaning ‘ Attempt or trial or effort’ in English. In a loose sense, an essay is a piece of writing that expresses information as well as the writer’s opinion. The essays or Asan-sar in this book evoke aesthetic feelings in the readers’ mind and imbue them with the writer’s idiosyncratic view on their characters. After reading them, they feel as if they had read a good poem. So Sayagyi Zaw Gyi remarked that, like a poem or a novel or a drama, Asan-sar should be acknowledged as a sort of aesthetic literature.

Asan-sar’ is a sequel to the Hkhit-san-sar (ခေတ်စမ်းစာ) ( Age –testing literature) movement which was launched at the advent of the 1930s. Prior to 1930, most of Myanmar writers were monks, ex-monks and products of monastic education. Therefore, they used to write long, verbose, complicated and rhymed sentences. Due to verbiage and grandiloquence, their writings hardly came off to the point. So their writing style was boring and tedious. As they focused only on kings, queens, princes, princesses, ministers and high- ranking officials from the court, they seemed to highlight the former glory of ancient Myanmar monarchy. Thus, their vaunted writings did not stand for the entire mass of the public.

When it came to 1930, a brood of Yangon University students such as Maung Sein Tin ( Thit-pan- Maung Wa), Maung Ei Maung ( Takatho Maung Thant Zin), Zaw Gyi, Minthu Wun, Kutha, Nwe Soe, etc, decided to revolt against this royal writing style. So they invented a new style of writing,fusing the traditionally classical style and the western academic form. Accordingly, they wrote shorter and clearer sentences and their topics were anything around them, whether they be beggars, dogs, cats, trees, brooks, etc. which caught their attention. They depicted their characters from the view-points different from those of others. They, from a vantage point, looked at the world and nature. Besides, they expressed their personal feelings towards their characters. Therefore, their writings could provide the readers with facts of human life, truths of the world and knowledge of nature. As a consequence, the readers could have deeper insight into nature and life. So the Hkhit-san-sar was hailed as a sort of literature modern and appropriate to the times by some readers, although traditionalist writers castigated it severely. It was at its height in the mid of the 1930s and went into eclipse and petered out in 1940 when the Second World War spread to Myanmar.

It is found that Asan-sar came back into vogue due to the endeavours of new generation writers about two decades afterwards. In the early 1960s, Thakatho Win Mon and Zaw Myint, in league with other literary enthusiasts, frequently held the Gan-gaw-myaing Literary Talks (ကံ့ကော်မြိုင်စာပေဝိုင်း),on the premises of Yangon University. Especially, they ardently perused essays written by western authors and wrote Asan-sar or essays on their own in the innovative style. Saya U Aung Thin wrote an essay titled ချိုတကူနှင့် ဂုဏ်ရည်မတူ (Cho-ta-gu and Being Unequal in Status)’, Thakatho Win Mon, an essay titled ‘ဗမာစွန် (Burma Kite)’ and Maung Zaw, an essay titled ‘ငါးမမျှားရ (Don’t fish)’respectively. Then they mooted their essays to Sayagyi Zaw Gyi for scrutiny. The latter gave feed-back on usage, syntax and ideaorganization of the essays. When they told Sayagyi that they were to publish their essays in the book-form , the latter suggested to them that as the essays were small in number, the essays of his and those of his colleagues should be added. Thus, they got 26 essays in total for publication. And, at the suggestion of Sayagyi Zaw Gyi, they named the anthology of those essays ‘ Gan-gaw-myaing Sardan ‘. It was published by Bagan Publication House in 1969 for the first time. It has been published so far for five times. It is successful to the extent that some essays of it were included in the Prescribed Text for High School Myanmar Prose.

The Gan-gaw-myaing Sardan comprises 26 essaysthree by Zaw Gyi, three by Min Thu Wun, two by Nwe Soe, three by Taik Soe , three by Min Yu Wai, three by Takatho Win Mon, two by Maung Zaw, one by Tin Moe and three by Maung Pe Than. The essays written by Zaw Gyi are ‘နွေဦးကျက်သရေ (The Grace of Spring)’, ‘uAsm0dkif;pm0dkif;ESifh uRefawmf ‘ (Poetry and Lireray Talks and Me )’ and ‘ပုဂံမြို့ဟောင်းနှင့် ကျွန်တော်‘ (Old Bagan and Me)’ those by Min Thu Wun are ‘အိုးစည်သံ (Sounds of the Open-ended Drum with a Long Body)’, ‘အလွမ်းရယ်တဲ့ ၁၂ ထွေ (Yearning All the Year Round) ’and ‘လူလည်းတထွေရေလည်းတစ်ခြား (Different Races in the Oversea Country),’ those by Nwe Soe are ‘ကုသိုလ်ဆက် (The Action Sustaining the Merit Already Existed )’ and ‘စိမ်းလန်းသောတောင်ကုန်းများ (Green Hills)’, those by Taik Soe are ‘အနုသုခုမ ( Aesthestic Art)’, ဇော်ဂျီနှင့် နှုတ်ခမ်းဆိုးဆေး ‘ The (Alchemist and Lip-stick Colour) and ‘နေဝင်မြင်သည်ဝရွှေပြည် (The City of Inwa Seen at Dusk),’ those by Min Yu Wai are ‘တစ်နှစ်တစ်ခါ (Once in a Year)’, ‘ပိုင်ဆိုင်ခြင်း (Ownership)’, and ‘ဦးရာကျော်ကောင်းမှု ( The Merit of U Yar Kyaw)’, those by Aung Thin are ‘အနီးအဝေး (Closeness and Distance), ‘ချိုတကူးနှင့် ဂုဏ်ရည်မတူ (Chota-ku and Being Unequal in Status), and ‘ရွှေယုန်နှင့် ရွှေကျား (Golden Rabbit and Golden Tiger)’, those by Takatho Win Mon are ‘ဗမာစွန်( Burman Kite), ‘မိဖြူ ( Mi Phyu)’ and ‘ဆားဒယ် (The Shallow, Open Square-shaped Iron-box Used for Salt-making),those by Maung Zaw are ‘မနက်စောစော (Early Morning)’, and ‘သီင်္ဂါရသ (Singara Rasa), that by Tin Moe is ‘သင်းချိုင်းကုန်းမှာ (At the Cemetery Mound)’, and those by Maung Pe Than are ‘ထင်းရှူးပင်ငယ်ပုံပမာ (Like the Example of a Fir)’, ‘သီချင်းညည်းတတ်သည့်အလေ့ (The Habit of Crooning Songs)’ and ‘စလောင်းဖုံးတစ်ချပ် ( A Cauldron Lid)’.

It is found that the characters of the essays included in the Gangaw-myaing Sardan are ordinary things animate and inanimate, such as water-pot stands, a female cat, poor Indian couples, whores, a lid of a cauldron, a tree, etc. Ostensibly, they look unimportant and unemotional. However, the writers, with their curious eyes, look at them at the close range and paint a vivid picture of them. The choice of the words is so exquisite, beautiful, evocative and comprehensible that they can make an emotional appeal to the readers’ mind and heart. So, even the characters which are ordinary things appears important to the readers. Feelings such as kindness, sympathy, understanding, happiness etc are provoked in their mind. At the same time, they got more profound understanding of life, nature and the world. Therefore, the writer think that the Gan-gawmyaing Sardan is a precious literary work and that writing of such essays or Asan-sar should be encouraged and revived.