Eigyin
Eigyin (Burmese: ဧချင်း, pronounced [ʔè dʑɪ́ɰ̃]) is a form of Burmese classical poem address to a royal child extolling the glory of ancestors.[1][2]
Eigyin is similar to the cradle song. However the main difference is that unlike the cradle song, eigyin is not easily understandable to children as it is about the royal family and their greatness.[2]
As eigyins revealed the glory of the royals, we can keep track of the history from eigyins.
The princes and princesses to whom eigyins composed were noted by the historians as Eigyin-Bwe-Khan (ဧချင်းဖွဲ့ခံ).
Format
The verse of eigyin begins and ends with the word "ဧ" (Ei), and that's why it is called eigyin. In other words, because the poem is sung peacefully and silently (အေး, Ei), it is called eigyin.
Eigyin has four syllables in a line composed with the same devowelizers to rhyme. The way to compose the lead lines is similar to the way of composition in pyo. There are five to sixteen stanzas including the two seven-syllable stanzas at the final line.
From the Inwa period to Konbaung period, the 12 famous old eigyins and 40 or 50 new eigyins can be found. Rakhine princess (daughter of Ba Saw Byu)[3] eigyin and Thakhin Htwe eigyin are the oldest ones.[4]
Notable composers and works
Eigyin developed widely in Toungoo dynasty.[5] The popular poet was Nawadegyi who composed king's mother eigyin in which he revealed the glory of the ancestors even from the Pyu period.[6][7] Another one was Min Zeyandameik who composed Minyenara eigyin which was about the pleasant 12 months in Toungoo.[8][9]
References
- "ဧချင်းထဲက မဟာသီရိဇေယျသူရ မင်းကြီးညို". MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews (in Burmese).
- လှိုင်း (မောင်), ယဉ် (2007). ဘုရင့်နောင်မင်းတရားကြီး၏ ဟံသာဝတီခေတ် ယဉ်ကျေးမှု (in Burmese). ပုံနှိပ်ရေးနှင့် စာပေထုတ်ဝေရေးလုပ်ငန်း.
- သူ, ထီလာစစ် (1998). Critiques on Myanmar Poetry: An Appreciation (in Burmese). Moe Min Sarpay.
- စာဆိုတော်များ အတ္ထုပတ္တိ (in Burmese). လောကစာပေ. 2002.
- "ဧချင်းများထဲမှ လူဝင်စားများ". MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews (in Burmese).
- ဦး), ထွန်းညို (တွင်းသင်းတိုက်ဝန် မဟာစည်သူ (2007). မဟာရာဇဝင်သစ်: တောင်ငူဆက် (in Burmese). အားမာန်သစ်စာပေ.
- ဩ, ရွှေဥ. (2001). မြန်မာစာဆိုတော်များ (in Burmese). စစ်သည်တော်စာပေ.
- လျင်), မြဦး (သန် (1994). ပန်တျာဂီတလမ်းညွှန် (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်.
- မြန်မာ့စစ်သွေး၊ မြန်မာ့စစ်ရေး (in Burmese). ကာကွယ်ရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန၊ လေ့ကျင့်ရေး ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးရုံး. 1994.