From India to the Irrawaddy
The story of the Mon script begins in Southern India during the Pallava dynasty, around the 4th to 6th centuries CE. The Pallavas used a writing system derived from the ancient Brahmi script. This Pallava script, an abugida where each consonant carries an inherent vowel, was spread across the Bay of Bengal by maritime traders and Buddhist monks. It reached the Mon people, who established kingdoms like Dvaravati and Thaton in what is now Thailand and southern Myanmar.
The oldest known Mon inscriptions, found in central Thailand, date to the 6th century CE. These early examples, inscribed on stone fragments and votive tablets, show a script very close to its Pallava parent. The writing system is a syllabic alphabet; vowel signs are added above, below, before, or after a consonant to modify its sound. Over centuries, the script adapted. Early inscriptions from the 5th century contain 23 consonants, while the modern Mon script has 35.
An Alphabet Adopts a Curve
As the script evolved, its letterforms underwent a distinct transformation. The angular and rectangular strokes of the early Pallava-derived script gradually became more rounded and circular. This change was a practical adaptation to the writing materials of the era. Scribes frequently used a stylus to write on palm leaves. Making straight lines on a dried palm leaf could easily cause it to rip and shred. The adoption of continuous curves solved this problem, resulting in the characteristic circular letters seen in both Mon and its descendant, Burmese.
The script continued to develop through the Dvaravati period and into the era of the Thaton Kingdom in Lower Burma, which flourished as a trading port from the 9th to the 11th centuries. Inscriptions from this period show a more developed and distinct Mon writing system, the direct precursor to the alphabet used to write Burmese.
The Myazedi Rosetta Stone
In 1057, King Anawrahta of the northern Pagan Kingdom conquered the Mon kingdom of Thaton. This event led to the Bamar people of Pagan adopting the Mon's Theravada Buddhism but also their writing system. The earliest evidence of the written Burmese language appears on inscriptions dated to 1035 and 1058.
A definitive snapshot of this linguistic transfer is the Myazedi inscription, erected in 1113 near Bagan. It is a four-sided stone pillar, with the same text inscribed in four different languages: Pāli, Pyu, Old Mon, and Old Burmese. The text records a donation by Prince Rajakumar to honor his father, King Kyanzittha. Because it presents the same text in multiple scripts, the Myazedi pillar became essential for deciphering the now-extinct Pyu language, earning it the nickname the "Rosetta Stone of Myanmar". It is a physical record of a moment when four languages and their scripts coexisted, just as the Mon script was giving birth to its most widespread descendant.