Burmese language in the context of Kadamba alphabet

The Mergui Archipelago (also Myeik Archipelago or Myeik Kyunzu; Burmese: မြိတ်ကျွန်းစု) is located in far southern Myanmar (Burma) and is part of the Tanintharyi Region. It consists of around 800 islands, varying in size from very small to hundreds of square kilometres, all lying in the Andaman Sea off the western shore of the Malay Peninsula near its landward (northern) end where it joins the rest of Indochina. They are occasionally referred to as the Pashu Islands because the Malay inhabitants are locally called Pashu.

Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has a population of about 55 million. It is bordered by India and Bangladesh to the northwest, China to the northeast, Laos and Thailand to the east and southeast, and the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal to the south and southwest. The country's capital city is Naypyidaw, while its largest city is Yangon (formerly Rangoon).

Early civilisations in the area included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Myanmar and the Mon kingdoms in Lower Myanmar. In the 9th century, the Bamar people entered the upper Irrawaddy valley, and following the establishment of the Pagan Kingdom in the 1050s, the Burmese language and culture and Theravada Buddhism slowly became dominant in the country. The Pagan Kingdom fell to Mongol invasions, and several warring states emerged. In the 16th century, reunified by the Taungoo dynasty, the country became the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia for a short period. The early 19th-century Konbaung dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Myanmar and briefly controlled Assam, the Lushai Hills, and Manipur as well. The British East India Company seized control of the administration of Myanmar after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century, and the country became a British colony. After a brief Japanese occupation, Myanmar was reconquered by the Allies. On 4 January 1948, Myanmar declared independence under the terms of the Burma Independence Act 1947.

British colonial rule in Burma lasted from 1824 to 1948, from the successive three Anglo-Burmese Wars through the creation of Burma as a province of British India to the establishment of an independently administered colony separate from British colonial India, and finally independence. The region under British control was known as British Burma, and officially known as Burma (Burmese: မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) from 1886.

Some portions of Burmese territories, including Arakan and Tenasserim, were annexed by the British after their victory in the First Anglo-Burmese War; Lower Burma was annexed in 1852 after the Second Anglo-Burmese War. These territories were designated as a chief commissioner's province known as British Burma in 1862.

Ba Maw (Burmese: ဘမော်, pronounced [ba̰ mɔ̀]; 8 February 1893 – 29 May 1977), known honorifically as Dr. Ba Maw, was a Burmese lawyer and politician, active during the interwar period and Second World War. He was the first Burma Premier (1937–1939) and head of State of Burma from 1943 to 1945.

Lower Myanmar (Burmese: အောက်မြန်မာပြည်, also called Lower Burma) is a geographic region of Myanmar and includes the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta (Ayeyarwady, Bago and Yangon Regions), as well as coastal regions of the country (Rakhine, Kayin and Mon States and Tanintharyi Region).

In the Burmese language, people originating from Upper Myanmar are typically called a-nya-tha for men and a-nya-thu for women, whereas those from Lower Myanmar are called auk tha (အောက်သား) for men and auk thu for women.

Upper Myanmar (Burmese: အထက်မြန်မာပြည် or မြန်မာပြည်အထက်ပိုင်း, also called Upper Burma) is one of two geographic regions in Myanmar, the other being Lower Myanmar. Located in the country's centre and north stretches, Upper Myanmar encompasses six inland states and regions, including Mandalay, Sagaing, Magway Regions, and Chin, Kachin and Shan States. By contrast, Lower Myanmar encompasses the southern and coastal-facing regions of Myanmar. Upper Myanmar is home to several distinct cultural regions, including the homeland of the Bamar in the low-lying central plains, and those of the Chin, Kachin, and Shan peoples in the highlands. Home to over 23 million people, the region's agricultural sector, natural resources, and shared borders with India, China, and Thailand have made Upper Myanmar a major economic hub. Four of Myanmar's ten largest cities—Mandalay, Taunggyi, Monywa, and Myitkyina—are located in the region.

Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Sinitic languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese (33 million) and the Tibetic languages (6 million). Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented.

Several low-level subgroups have been securely reconstructed, but reconstruction of a proto-language for the family as a whole is still at an early stage, so the higher-level structure of Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. Although the family is traditionally presented as divided into Sinitic (i.e. Chinese languages) and Tibeto-Burman branches, a common origin of the non-Sinitic languages has never been demonstrated.

Burmese names (Burmese: မြန်မာ အမည်) lack the serial structure of most Western names. Like other Mainland Southeast Asian people (except Vietnamese), the people of Myanmar have no customary matronymic or patronymic naming system and no tradition of surnames. Although other Mainland Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia introduced the use of surnames or patronyms in the early 20th century, Myanmar never introduced the use of surnames and lacks surnames in the modern day. Instead, Burmese names use an honorific prefix to reflect the person's stage in life and position in society.

Depending on the methods of counting, as many as three hundred versions of the Indian Hindu epic poem, the Ramayana, are known to exist. The oldest version is generally recognized to be the Sanskrit version attributed to sage Narada, the Mula Ramayana. Narada passed on the knowledge to Valmiki, who authored Valmiki Ramayana, the present oldest available version of Ramayana.

The Ramayana has spread to many Asian countries outside of India, including Burma, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam and China. The original Valmiki version has been adapted or translated into various regional languages, which have often been marked more or less by plot twists and thematic adaptations. Some of the important adaptations of the classic tale include the 12th-century Tamil language Ramavataram, 12th-century Kannada Ramachandra Charitapurana or Pampa Ramayana by Nagachandra, 13th-century Telugu language Sri Ranganatha Ramayanam, 14th or 15th-century Assamese Saptakanda Ramayana, 15th-century Bengali Krittivasi Ramayana, 16th-century Awadhi Ramcharitmanas, 17th-century Malayalam language Adhyathmaramayanam Kilippattu, the Khmer Reamker, the Old Javanese Kakawin Ramayana, and the Thai Ramakien, the Lao Phra Lak Phra Lam, and the Burmese Yama Zatdaw.

11°03′N 98°51′E / 11.050°N 98.850°E / 11.050; 98.850

Kawthoung District (Burmese: ကော့သောင်ခရိုင်) is a district of Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar. The district covers an area of 9,178 km, and had a population of 221,738 at the 2014 census.

The Tenasserim Hills or Tenasserim Range (Burmese: တနင်္သာရီ တောင်တန်း, [tənɪ̀ɰ̃θàjì tàʊɰ̃dáɰ̃]; Thai: ทิวเขาตะนาวศรี, RTGS: Thio Khao Tanao Si, pronounced [tʰīw kʰǎw tā.nāːw sǐː]; Malay: Banjaran Tanah Seri/Banjaran Tenang Sari) is the geographical name of a roughly 1,700 km long mountain chain, part of the Indo-Malayan mountain system in Southeast Asia.

Despite their relatively scant altitude these mountains form an effective barrier between Thailand and Myanmar in their northern and central region. There are only two main transnational roads and cross-border points between Kanchanaburi and Tak, at the Three Pagodas Pass and at Mae Sot. The latter is located beyond the northern end of the range, where the Tenasserim Hills meet the Dawna Range. Minor cross-border points are Sing Khon, near Prachuap Khiri Khan, as well as Bong Ti and Phu Nam Ron west of Kanchanaburi. The latter is expected to gain in importance if the planned Dawei Port Project goes ahead, along with a highway and a railway line between Bangkok and that harbor.

The Naf River (Bengali: নাফ নদী Naf Nodi IPA: [naf nod̪i]; Burmese: နတ်မြစ် [naʔ mjɪʔ]; Rakhine: နတ်မြစ် [nɛ́ mràɪʔ]) is an international river marking part of the border of southeastern Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar.

The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Chinese members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail.

Though the division of Sino-Tibetan into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman branches (e.g. Benedict, Matisoff) is widely used, some historical linguists criticize this classification, as the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages lack any shared innovations in phonology or morphology to show that they comprise a clade of the phylogenetic tree.

Hkakabo Razi (Burmese: ခါကာဘိုရာဇီ, pronounced [kʰàkàbò ɹàzì]; simplified Chinese: 开加博峰; traditional Chinese: 開加博峯; pinyin: Kāijiābó Fēng) is believed to be Myanmar's highest mountain. The 5,881-meter (19,295 ft)-tall mountain is the highest mountain in Southeast Asia as well. It is located in the northern Myanmar state of Kachin in an outlying subrange of the Greater Himalayan mountain system near the border tripoint with India (Arunachal Pradesh) and China (Tibet Autonomous Region). Its highest status has recently been challenged by 5,870-meter (19,260 ft)-tall Gamlang Razi, located about 6.6 kilometers (4.1 mi) WSW on the Chinese border.

Administratively, it lies in Dahangdan, Nogmung Township, Putao District, Kachin state.The peak is enclosed within Khakaborazi National Park. The park is entirely mountainous and is characterized by broad-leaved evergreen tropical rain forest at low altitudes, a sub-tropical temperate zone from 8,000 to 9,000 ft (2,400–2,700 m), then broad-leaved, semi-deciduous forest and finally needle-leaved evergreen, snow forest. Above 11,000 ft (3,400 m), the highest forest zone is alpine, different from the forest not only in kind but in history and origin. Still higher, around 15,000 ft (4,600 m), cold, barren, windswept terrain and permanent snow and glaciers dominate. At around 17,500 ft (5,300 m), there is a large ice cap with several outlet glaciers.

Kachin State (Burmese: ကချင်ပြည်နယ်; Kachin: Jinghpaw Mungdaw) is the northernmost state of Myanmar. It is bordered by China to the north and east (Tibet and Yunnan, respectively), Shan State to the south, and Sagaing Region and India (Arunachal Pradesh) to the west. It lies between north latitude 23° 27' and 28° 25' longitude 96° 0' and 98° 44'. The area of Kachin State is 89,041 km (34,379 sq mi). The capital of the state is Myitkyina. Other important towns include Bhamo, Mohnyin and Putao.

Kachin State has Myanmar's highest mountain, Hkakabo Razi at 5,889 metres (19,321 ft), forming the southern tip of the Himalayas, and a large inland lake, Indawgyi Lake. It also has the most national parks of any administrative division in Myanmar, that being three.

Abul A'la al-Maududi (Urdu: ابو الاعلیٰ المودودی, romanized: Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī; (1903-09-25)25 September 1903 – (1979-09-22)22 September 1979) was an Islamic scholar, Islamist ideologue, Muslim philosopher, jurist, historian, journalist, activist, and scholar active in British India and later, following the partition, in Pakistan. Described by Wilfred Cantwell Smith as "the most systematic thinker of modern Islam", his numerous works, which "covered a range of disciplines such as Qur'anic exegesis, hadith, law, philosophy, and history", were written in Urdu, but then translated into English, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Burmese, Malayalam and many other languages. He sought to revive Islam, and to propagate what he understood to be "true Islam". He believed that Islam was essential for politics and that it was necessary to institute sharia and preserve Islamic culture similarly as to that during the reign of the Rashidun Caliphs and abandon immorality, from what he viewed as the evils of secularism, nationalism and socialism, which he understood to be the influence of Western imperialism.

He founded the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami. At the time of the Indian independence movement, Maududi and the Jamaat-e-Islami actively worked to oppose the partition of India. After it occurred, Maududi and his followers shifted their focus to politicising Islam and generating support for making Pakistan an Islamic state. They are thought to have helped influence General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq to introduce the Islamisation in Pakistan, and to have been greatly strengthened by him after tens of thousands of members and sympathisers were given jobs in the judiciary and civil service during his administration. He was the first recipient of the Saudi Arabian King Faisal International Award for his service to Islam in 1979. Maududi was part of establishing and running of Islamic University of Madinah, Saudi Arabia.

The Mon (Mon: ဂကူမန်listen; Thai Mon: ဂကူမည်; Burmese: မွန်လူမျိုး‌, pronounced [mʊ̀ɰ̃ lù mjó]; Thai: มอญ, pronounced [mɔ̄ːn] listen) are an ethnic group who inhabit Lower Myanmar's Mon State, Kayin State, Kayah State, Tanintharyi Region, Bago Region, the Irrawaddy Delta, and several areas in Thailand (mostly in Pathum Thani province, Phra Pradaeng and Nong Ya Plong). The native language is Mon, which belongs to the Monic branch of the Austroasiatic language family and shares a common origin with the Nyah Kur language, which is spoken by the people of the same name that live in Northeastern Thailand. A number of languages in Mainland Southeast Asia are influenced by the Mon language, which is also in turn influenced by those languages.

The Mon were one of the earliest to reside in Southeast Asia, and were responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Mainland Southeast Asia. The civilizations founded by the Mon were some of the earliest in Thailand as well as Myanmar and Laos. The Mon are regarded as a large exporter of Southeast Asian culture. Historically, many cities in Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos today, including Yangon, Pathum Thani, Lamphun, Lampang, and Vientiane were founded either by the Mon people or Mon rulers.