Mindon-min was succeeded by Thibaw, who was deposed by the British.  The Sangharaja maintained his office until he died in 1895.  An interregnum then occurred for the appointment had always been made by the king, not by the Sangha.  But when Lord Curzon visited Burma in 1901 he made arrangements for the election by the monks themselves of a superior of the whole order and Taunggwin Sayadaw was solemnly installed in this office by the British authorities in 1903 with the title of Thathanabaing.[167]

3

We may now examine briefly some sides of popular religion and institutions which are not Buddhist.  It is an interesting fact that the Burmese law books or Dhammathats,[168] which are still accepted as regulating inheritance and other domestic matters, are Indian in origin and show no traces of Sinhalese influence although since 1750 there has been a decided tendency to bring them into connection with authorities accepted by Buddhism.  The earliest of these codes are those of Dhammavilasa (1174 A.D.) and of Waguru, king of Martaban in 1280.  They professedly base themselves on the authority of Manu and, so far as purely legal topics are concerned, correspond pretty closely with the rules of the Manava-dharmasastra.  But they omit all prescriptions which involve Brahmanic religious observances such as penance and sacrifice.  Also the theory of punishment is different and inspired by the doctrine of Karma, namely, that every evil deed will bring its own retribution.  Hence the Burmese codes ordain for every crime not penalties to be suffered by the criminal but merely the payment of compensation to the party aggrieved, proportionate to the damage suffered.[169] It is probable that the law-books on which these codes were based were brought from the east coast of India and were of the same type as the code of Narada, which, though of unquestioned Brahmanic orthodoxy, is almost purely legal and has little to say about religion.  A subsidiary literature embodying local decisions naturally grew up, and about 1640 was summarized by a Burmese nobleman called Kaing-za in the Maharaja-dhammathat.  He received from the king the title of Manuraja and the name of Manu became connected with his code, though it is really based on local custom.  It appears to have superseded older law-books until the reign of Alompra who remodelled the administration and caused several codes to be compiled.[170] These also preserve the name of Manu, but he and Kaing-za are treated as the same personage.  The rules of the older law-books are in the main retained but are made to depend on Buddhist texts.  Later Dhammathats become more and more decidedly Buddhist.  Thus the Mohavicchedani (1832) does not mention Manu but presents the substance of the Manu Dhammathats as the law preached by the Buddha.