Provincial Geographies of India/Volume 4/Chapter 20

by Herbert Thirkell White

CHAPTER XX

ARCHITECTURE AND ANTIQUITIES

All that is characteristic in Burmese architecture is embodied in buildings sacred to the Buddhist religion. Except the palace at Mandalay, there were, in recent Burmese times, literally no secular buildings of beauty, grandeur, or importance. The houses of even the highest officers of State were wooden structures, raised from the ground on wooden posts, situated in the midst of a spacious win (compound or enclosure) in which around the central buildings were scattered the smaller houses of retainers. Humbler dwellings, in town or village, were of similar type and in rural parts these conditions still prevail. In towns a good many masonry houses have been built. In Mandalay, there were some of these, but not many, in Burmese times.

Pagodas. Pagodas abound all over the country. The typical Burmese pagoda is well described by the early traveller, Fitch:

They be made round like a sugar loaf; some are as high as a church, very broad beneath; some a quarter of a mile in compass; within they be all earth, done about with stone...they be all gilded aloft; and many of them from the top to the bottom; and every ten or twelve years they must be new gilded, because the rain consumeth off the gold; for they stand open abroad^[1].

The description holds good in the present day. But the great majority of pagodas, elsewhere than in large towns, are not gilded but simply covered with white stucco. Every village has its pagoda; and many are built in waste places, and on the tops of hills. The supreme work of merit is the building of a pagoda; the highest unofficial title of respect, paya-taga, pagoda-builder. The more pretentious pagodas are built on raised platforms whereon are crowded shrines, zayats (rest-houses), images, altars for lights and flowers, bells, tagundaing (posts decorated with streamers), water-stands, images of the Buddha.

Pagodas at Rangoon, Mandalay, Pagan, and elsewhere have already been described. A long list of other pagodas might be compiled and an account of Burma would be incomplete without mention of the most notable. When great

Fig. 80. Chinthes, figures at Pagoda entrance.

age is assigned to a pagoda, it must not be supposed that it was built originally of its present height and splendour. The first building was probably small and insignificant, magnified by later accretions superimposed.

In the midst of Rangoon stands the Sule Pagoda, of venerable antiquity, but overshadowed by the dominance of Shwe Dagôn. In Thatôn are Zingyaik (11th century) and a pagoda said to have been built by King Dhammacheti in the 15th century; and at Kyaikkatha in that district are the remains of a thousand pagodas.

Most famous among the small pagodas is the Kyaik-htee-yoh^[2] insignificant in size, but unique from its position. The hill on which it stands takes its name from the payah, and is over three thousand five hundred feet in height. On its summit are numbers of granitoid boulders, many of them balanced in

Fig. 81. Pagodas at Sagaing.

a most extraordinary way, and all the more striking surmounted by little shrines. The Kyaik-htee-yoh stands on a huge boulder, which itself rests on a projecting rock, separated from the rest of the hills by a chasm, fathomless to the eye, and reaching, so say the villagers, far below the depth of the hill. The boulder hangs on the extreme verge of the bare rock, and hangs over it as if a gust of wind or a few extra pounds added would make it topple over and crash down the giddy height far away into the green valley below. To this shrine people from all parts of the country but more especially the Talaings, come in the month of February, and cast jewellery and precious stones into the yawning rift, and, clambering up the rock by the aid of a bamboo ladder, cover the payah with flowers and small lighted candles, making it look like a new nebulous constellation from the far off plains. Inquirers are told with the utmost confidence that the pagoda is five thousand years old. It certainly has been there time out of mind, and the boulder has solely been kept in its place by the hair buried under the shrine, and given to a hermit by the great Budh himself when he returned from Tawa-dehutha, the second heaven of the Nat-dewahs, on the occasion of his preaching the law to his mother....The view from the pagoda is superb; bounded on the east by the blue Martaban hills, fading away into the dim peaks of Siam; and extending southward over tangled jungle and yellow paddy lands to the bright waves of the Gulf of Martaban, while to the west the jewelled speck of the pagoda at Pegu almost leads one to imagine the stately bulk of the Shway Dagohn beyond^[3].

Bilugyun in Amherst has sixty pagodas of venerable age. At Amherst Point is Yele, within a hundred feet of which no woman may tread. Sandaw, in the same district, claims to be as old as Shwe Dagôn. At a very famous pagoda, Shinmôkti, in Tavoy, is an image which floated miraculously across the Bay of Bengal. Other shrines of great antiquity in Tavoy and Mergui are merely names.

In Arakan, the most interesting archaeological remains are at Mrohaung, the capital from 1430 to 1782.

The largest and best monuments and sculptures of Mrohaung belong to the 15th and 16th centuries. Their interest lies in the fact that some of them are unlike in style to anything seen in the rest of Burma; they were temples as well as forts at the same time. Another interesting feature, very rare in Burma, and even in Pagan itself, is that stone was very largely used for building....Solid or cylindrical pagodas...are completely built of stone and are generally among the best preserved monuments at Mrohaung^[4].

In the architecture as well as in the subjects of some of the stone carvings are many traces of Hindu influence.

The Shittaung temple, with its hundred images of Buddha, the Dakkan-thein, a temple fortress, the An-daw or Tooth-relic Temple, the Ratanabon Pagoda, a quaint structure of the solid cylindrical type, the Lemyethna Temple, the Rata-man-aung Pagoda^[5]

are among the principal shrines. At Vesālī, the site of a

Fig. 82. Turtle tank, Arakan Pagoda.

more ancient capital, near Mrohaung, are also interesting relics.

Thayetmyo has Shwemyindin or Shwe-sut-taung-byi (the golden shrine of prayers granted) dating from the first century of our era. Shwezettaw (the golden footprint) in Minbu commemorates a visit of Gaudama Buddha. Anaw-rata is reputed to have built Taung-gyi-swe-daw opposite Pagan and Sut-taung-byi in Madaya (Mandalay district), the latter to celebrate victories over China. Shwezayun, on the Myitngè, is famous for its tame fish which come for food when called and are decorated with gold leaf by visitors at the pagoda festival. In Sagaing is the celebrated Kaunghmudaw, built by Thalun Mintayagyi, King of Ava, in 1636. Two others date from the 10th century. In Kyauksè, Asoka built at least one and Anawrata many pagodas which still exist; and here is Shwemôktaw, built

Fig. 83. Eindawya Pagoda.

by a king more than two thousand years ago. Meiktila has two pagodas of Anawrata and of Narapatisithu. An interesting shrine in Myingyan is Kyauk-ku, the rock-cave pagoda, under and near which are caves where hermits dwell. Shwegu near Bhamo, "is a perfect forest of Pagodas^[6]."

In the Shan States are many renowned pagodas; among which may be mentioned Mwedaw at Bawgyo in Hsipaw; Kaunghmu Mwedaw Manloi in South Hsenwi, built on the spot where Gaudama died in one of his earlier incarnations as a parrot; Kaunghmu Kawmong at Manhpai, illuminated by nats on dark nights; Anteng and Thandaung in Yawnghwe said to have been built by Asoka and repaired by Anawrata.

Fig. 84. Thein.

Besides pagodas, Burmese sacred buildings include monasteries, thein^[7], and zayat^[8]. Some of the more notable monasteries have already been described. Every village has its monastery, a one-storeyed building, where the monk and his acolytes reside, absorbed in meditation or engaged in teaching young boys.

Inscriptions. "Burma is one of the very richest countries in Indo-China in lithic inscriptions. The least religious foundation, benefaction, or dedication of land, slaves, or fruit trees was generally recorded on stone." But hardly any inscriptions have been found earlier than the middle of the 11th century A.D.^[9]

Images. Some famous images have been mentioned. At Pāgăt, on the Salween, is a notable collection. Here are the famous caves where besides countless numbers at the entrance are myriads of statues within.

In the words of a bye-gone traveller:—"(The cave) is of vast size, chiefly in one apartment, which needs no human art to render it sublime. The eye is confused, and the heart appalled....Every where, on the floor, overhead, on the jutting points, and on the stalactite festoons of the roof, are crowded together images of Gautama—the offerings of successive ages. Some are perfectly gilded; others encrusted with calcareous matter; some fallen, yet sound; others mouldered; others just erected. Some of these are of stupendous size; some not larger than one's finger; and some of all the intermediate sizes—marble, stone, wood, brick, and clay. Some even of marble, are so time-worn though sheltered from change of temperature, that the face and fingers are obliterated. Here and there are models of temples, kyoungs^[10], etc., some not larger than half a bushel, and some ten or fifteen feet square, absolutely filled with small idols, heaped promiscuously one on the other. As we followed the path, which wound among the groups of figures and models, every new aspect of the cave presented new multitudes of images^[11]."

Another remarkable group exists at Akauktaung, on the edge of the Irrawaddy, at the extreme north of the Henzada district.

Here the right bank rises proudly to a lofty cliff, overhung with evergreen forest, and this cliff is made holy and glorious by hundreds and hundreds of images of the Buddha, each in its separate shrine, sculptured tier above tier out of the solid rock. The Buddhas sit royally enthroned, a splendid company, looking down upon the river, watching the great steamers pass and little canoes freighted with laughing children; listening to the song of the Irrawaddy and to the little bells on the tiny white pagoda on the edge of the cliff. Transfigured in sunlight, the Buddhas glow in their dark frame of forest, under shimmering daylight skies. Radiant, unearthly, they gleam in the witchery of Eastern moonlight.

Fig. 85. Gaudama Buddha.

It seems as if the whole wonderful group must have arisen in a single moment at the bidding of a divinity, so ethereal, so harmonious is the impression it makes upon the mind. Yet each image owes its existence to the piety of some simple husbandman, spending with royal largesse the proceeds of his harvest. The Burman, no wise calculator, gives all he can and knows not ignoble thrift^[12].

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1. Hakluyt, II. 393.
2. Also in the Thatôn district.
3. The Burman, 167—168.
4. Archaeological Survey Report, Burma, 1920—21.
5. Archaeological Survey Report, ut sup.
6. The Burman, 174.
7. Halls for the ordination of monks.
8. Rest-houses for travellers and pilgrims.
9. Archaeological Survey Report, ut sup.
10. Kyaung, a monastery.
11. Cited from a chapter of The Silken East (xxxiii.), which contains an admirable description of the caves and their vicinity.
12. Marjorie Laurie.