embracing the reigns of Anawrata, Kyansittha, Alaung-sithu, Narapati-sithu, and Talokpye Min. For miles along the river bank are still standing some 5000 pagodas and Buddhist temples, Pagan itself extending for five miles with a breadth of two miles; but the area occupied by sacred buildings at Pagan and in the vicinity is about 100 square miles[1]. Shortly before the Mongol invasion, Marco Polo describes Pagan which he calls Amien, the capital city of the province of that name, as "a very great and noble city[2]."
"And in this city," he writes, "there is a thing so rich and rare that I must tell you about it. You see there was in former days a rich and puissant King in this city and when he was about to die he commanded that by his tomb they should erect two towers (one at each end), one of gold and the other of silver, in such fashion as I shall tell you. The towers are built of fine stone; and the one of them has been covered with gold, a good finger in thickness, so that the tower looks as if it were all of solid gold; and the other is covered with silver in like manner so that it seems to be all of solid silver. Each tower is of a good ten paces in height and of breadth in proportion. The Upper Part of these towers is round, and girt all along with bells, the top of the gold tower with gilded bells and the silver tower with silvered bells, insomuch that whenever the wind blows among these bells they tinkle. The King caused these towers to be erected to commemorate his magnificence and for the good of his soul, and really they do form one of the finest sights in the world; so exquisitely finished are they, so splendid and costly."
Unhappily no remains of these exquisite buildings can be traced, but many worthy compeers survive. In the classical description of the antiquities of Pagan, Sir Henry Yule thus summarizes the several styles of architecture:
The bell-shaped pyramid of dead brickwork in all its varieties; the same raised over a square or octagonal cell, containing an image of the Buddha; the bluff, knob-like dome of the Ceylon Dagobahs, with the square cap which seems to have charac-
