Thein Pei Myint

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Thein Pei Myint (Burmese: သိန္‌းဖေမ္ရင္‌့; IPA: [θéɪn pè mjḭn]) was also known as the "Modern Monk" because this was the title of the controversial book that he first gained notoriety as an author with during the late colonial era. This book was and still may be banned in Burma. Its subject matter is certainly scandalous. It is the story of an itinerant monk preacher who engages in romantic liaisons with some of his followers and a nun. After the book was published Thein Pei Myint was forced to apologize to the Burmese Sangha (the ecclesiastical organization of monks in Burma).

In a volume of auto-biographical reminiscences named The Modern Age, a Modern Person, a Modern Monk: Thein Pei Myint published in the mid 1970s he pulls together a number of articles that appeared in magazines debating the merits of the book after its publication in the late 1930s. Thein Pei Myint claims that what he wrote was based on breaches of monastic discipline that actually occurred at the time. If indeed Thein Pei Myint is pointing his critical eye at the Burmese Sangha then this book is different from most of the more intellectual books of the time which have an anti-colonial theme.

As an act of penance, he quickly published a new book Evil god of the Modern Age which took the venereal disease syphilis as its subject. A lot of this book is very reminiscent of San Francisco during the AIDS epidemic in the gay community of San Francisco or in the recent past in many communities in northern Thailand. The main character is not rich enough to marry his sweetheart so he falls into a life of prostitutes and drinking and contracts syphilis from one of them. Much of the book takes place in the hospital wards and depicts the suffering of the syphilis patients there.

A selection of Thein Pei Myint's collected short stories was translated into English as part of a master's degree in Burmese literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the mid 1960s and then republished in the Cornell Southeast Asian Series.

In the short story Her Husband or Her Money an old widower strives to win the affections of his rich neighbour, a widow. He dreams of the difference that all this money will make in his life. He eventually marries her, but the life he leads is a far cry from what he expected. The woman works him to the bone and when their lives are both put into danger after a robber breaks into the house, it becomes painfully apparent that she really doesn't love him at all when she's willing to sacrifice his life to save her money.

True to his reputation as a man who held nothing as sacred he also published two little scathing essays in which he questions the value of traditional Burmese literature, the literature which preceded colonialism and contact with the west, mostly poetry and plays in verse. The first essay Literary Rebels of Former Times argues that flattering the king was the driving force behind the literature written in the court of the Burmese king. He also lists a number of writers that in his opinion went against this dominant trend of flattery and false praise. The second essay U Ponnya, Eloquent Language with Shallow Meaning criticizes the so-called "Shakespeare" of Burma, the poet U Ponnya who was beheaded after making one too many ironic quips about those around him.