Thaton

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Thaton, Union of Myanmar

No flag	No coat of arms
(City flag)	(City coat of arms)

City motto: No motto

City proper

Province

Mon State

Mayor

Area

Population

130.763 (2007 estimate)^[1]

Density

For the village in Thailand, see Ban Thaton

Thaton (Burmese: သထုံမ္ရုိ့; MLCTS: sa. htum mrui.) is a town in Mon State, in southern Myanmar on the Tenasserim plains.

[edit] History

Thaton was a center for a Mon kingdom which stretched from the Ayeyarwady delta region to as far east as Cambodia. Like the Burmese and the Thais, some modern Mons have tried to identify their ethnicity and, specifically this kingdom at Thaton, with the semi-historical kingdom of Suwarnabhumi ("The Golden Land"); today, this claim is contested by many different ethnicities in Southeast Asia, and contradicted by scholars. Historical scholarship indicates that the early usage of the term (as found in the edicts of Ashoka of India, who sent Buddhist missionaries there in the 3rd century BC) indicated a location in southern India, and not in Southeast Asia^{[citation needed]}.

In the kingdom of Dvaravati, Thaton was an important seaport on the Gulf of Martaban, for trade with India and Sri Lanka. Shin Aran, also called Dhammadassi, a monk born in Thaton and raised and educated in Nakhorn Pathom, an old capital of the Mon kingdom of Dvaravadi, now in Thailand, took Theravada Buddhism north to the Burmese kingdom of Bagan. In 1057, King Anawrahta of Bagan conquered Thaton.