Theinkha Bo
prince of Binnaka

Theinkha Bo (Burmese: သိင်္ခဗိုလ်, pronounced [θèiɴkʰa̰ bò]) was the father of kings Athinkhaya, Yazathingyan and Thihathu of Myinsaing, the dynasty that replaced the Pagan Dynasty in 1297. His descendants founded the kingdoms that succeeded Pagan: Myinsaing, Pinya, Sagaing and Ava.
According to the Burmese chronicles, Theinkha Bo was born in Binnaka to the sawbwa (saopha) (chief) of the town. Some time after his elder brother succeeded the chieftainship, he and his brother quarreled, forcing Theinkha Bo to leave town. He eventually settled at Myinsaing, a small town located in present-day Kyaukse District, and married a woman from a wealthy family there in 1260. The couple had four children. His three sons served in the Pagan army, and became commanders that King Narathihapate relied on. His youngest child married a son of the king.
Although the chronicles do not mention his ethnicity, British colonial era historians assumed that he was of Shan ethnicity based on the fact that his father was a sawbwa. The historian Michael Aung-Thwin has argued however that it is a mistake to equate the office with ethnicity, and that colonial scholarship grafted on Shan ethnicity to the so-called Shan brothers without any evidence.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20992105. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1297 and 1260.
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This entry incorporates text from “Theinkha Bo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.