The geo-political and cultural-historical context, more than any other single factor, has shaped the notion of Mranma Pran in pre-colonial times. It is derived from a longstanding reality embodied in the term anya (‘upstream’), representing Upper Burma (hence, the term anyatha, ‘offspring of Upper Burma’). Although Lower Burma also has an equivalent in the term akriy (‘downstream’), it was Upper Burma more than any other region in the country that initially exemplified the term Mranma Pran, the ‘heartland’ of the country's culture and society for over a millennium. The meaning of the term Mranma Pran (or its colonial term, ‘Burma’), therefore, depends on the context in which and by whom it is viewed.

The study of the political in Myanmar over the past 200 years has been conducted in circumstances and with methods that have resulted in only partial and often unsatisfactory outcomes. Difficulties of accessing data and problems in its analysis have forced analysts to seek to understand Myanmar's politics often through informed hunches from a comparative perspective. As the field has grown, it has also become somewhat more politicised and there is a necessity to be analytically self-critical in order to avoid making ‘facts’ fit theories.

This paper surveys the history of anthropological work on Burma, dealing both with Burman and other ethnic groups. It focuses upon the relations between anthropology and other disciplines, and upon the relationship of such work to the development of anthropological theory. It tries to show how anthropology has contributed to an overall understanding of Burma as a field of study and, conversely, how work on Burma has influenced the development of anthropology as a subject. It also tries to relate the way in which anthropology helps place Burma in the broader context of Southeast Asia.

The paper delineates stages in the interpretation of religion in Burma. Beginning with colonial constructions, the discussion moves to subsequent studies in anthropology and history from which emerged an emphasis on localised articulations of Theravada Buddhist traditions. Others examined religion as a site for colonial resistance and as a means for engaging issues of modernity. More recent interpreters focused on Buddhist voices in the public domain of contemporary Burma and some recent studies moved beyond received boundaries of inquiry to consider religions among ethnic minorities and diaspora communities. The final section charts future development in the study of religion in Burma.

New data from an archaeological survey of Sriksetra suggests that this important site is set for a major reinterpretation. The city functioned over a much longer period than was previously believed. There are many more buildings than had been previously recorded. Some of the city walls and moats, once considered to have been military fortifications, prove to be part of a multifunctional and evolving system of hydraulic management.

The category of rebellion has held a special place in the epistemological construction of Southeast Asian culture, as studies of anti-colonial movements and their underlying ideological foundations have revealed strikingly similar modes for articulating protest. In particular, the combination of religion with resistance has endured as a useful framework for not only understanding how particular Southeast Asians may have conceptualised the historical processes associated with colonialism, but for how ‘autonomous’ vocabularies remained intact and available to rural communities in times of crisis. Among the several regional cases, British Burma's Saya San rebellion (1930–32) has emerged in scholarship as a quintessential example of one such social movement where protest was articulated through a mixture of millenarian expectations, ritual and Buddhist sensibilities. This study explores the role of scholarship in the historical construction of Saya San and retraces the interpretive strategies that link the various ways in which the rebellion has been imagined. Though different understandings of the Saya San rebellion have been offered since the 1930s, the remains of colonial administrative rule lay deeply embedded in this scholarship.