Pagan Kingdom

Kingdom of Pagan
ပုဂံခေတ်
849–1297

Pagan Empire c. 1210.

Pagan Empire during Sithu II's reign.
Burmese chronicles also claim Kengtung
and Chiang Mai. Pagan incorporated key
ports of Lower Burma into its core
administration by the 13th century.
Status Kingdom

Capital Pagan (Bagan)

(849–1297)

Common languages Old Burmese, Mon,

Pyu

Religion Theravada
Buddhism,
Mahayana
Buddhism,
Hinduism, Animism

Government Monarchy
• 1044–77 Anawrahta
• 1084–1112 Kyansittha
• 1112–67 Sithu I
• 1174–1211 Sithu II
• 1256–87 Narathihapate
Legislature None (rule by
decree) (before
King Htilominlo)
Hluttaw (after King
Htilominlo)
Historical era Middle Ages
• Burmese calendar 23 March 640
begins
• Founding of 23 December 849
Kingdom
• creation of 984 and 1035
Burmese
alphabet
• Pagan Empire 1050s–60s
founded
• Peak 1174–1250
• First Mongol 1277–87
invasions
• Myinsaing 17 December 1297
takeover
• Final Mongol 1300–01
invasion
Population
• c. 1210 1.5 to 2 million
Currency silver kyat
 Preceded by Succeeded by
Pyu city- Myinsaing Kingdom
states Hanthawaddy
Mon city- Kingdom
states Lemro dynasty
Lemro Shan States
dynasty

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The Kingdom of Pagan (Burmese:

ပုဂံခေတ်, pronounced [bəɡàɰ̃ kʰɪʔ],
lit. 'Pagan Period'; also known as the
Pagan dynasty and the Pagan Empire;
also the Bagan dynasty or Bagan Empire)
was the first Burmese kingdom to unify
the regions that would later constitute
modern-day Myanmar. Pagan's 250-year
rule over the Irrawaddy valley and its
periphery laid the foundation for the
ascent of Burmese language and culture,
the spread of Bamar ethnicity in Upper
Myanmar, and the growth of Theravada
Buddhism in Myanmar and in mainland
Southeast Asia.[1]

The kingdom grew out of a small 9th-

century settlement at Pagan (present-day
Bagan) by the Mranma/Burmans, who
had recently entered the Irrawaddy valley
from the Kingdom of Nanzhao. Over the
next two hundred years, the small
principality gradually grew to absorb its
surrounding regions until the 1050s and
1060s when King Anawrahta founded the
Pagan Empire, for the first time unifying
under one polity the Irrawaddy valley and
its periphery. By the late 12th century,
Anawrahta's successors had extended
their influence farther to the south into
the upper Malay peninsula, to the east at
least to the Salween river, in the farther
north to below the current China border,
and to the west, in northern Arakan and
the Chin Hills.[2][3] In the 12th and 13th
centuries, Pagan, alongside the Khmer
Empire, was one of two main empires in
mainland Southeast Asia.[4]
The Burmese language and culture
gradually became dominant in the upper
Irrawaddy valley, eclipsing the Pyu, Mon
and Pali norms by the late 12th century.
Theravada Buddhism slowly began to
spread to the village level although
Tantric, Mahayana, Brahmanic, and
animist practices remained heavily
entrenched at all social strata. Pagan's
rulers built over 10,000 Buddhist temples
in the Bagan Archaeological Zone of
which over 2000 remain. The wealthy
donated tax-free land to religious
authorities.[5]

The kingdom went into decline in the

mid-13th century as the continuous
growth of tax-free religious wealth by the
1280s had severely affected the crown's
ability to retain the loyalty of courtiers
and military servicemen. This ushered in
a vicious circle of internal disorders and
external challenges by the Arakanese,
Mons, Mongols and Shans. Repeated
Mongol invasions (1277–1301) toppled
the four-century-old kingdom in 1287.
The collapse was followed by 250 years
of political fragmentation that lasted well
into the 16th century.[6][7]
History

Origins

The origins of the Pagan kingdom have

been reconstructed using archaeological
evidence as well as the Burmese
chronicle tradition. Considerable
differences exist between the views of
modern scholarship and various
chronicle narratives.

Chronicle tradition

According to the local myth and

chronicles written down in the 18th
century trace its origins to 167 CE, when
Pyusawhti founded the dynasty at Pagan
(Bagan). But the 19th-century Glass
Palace Chronicle (Hmannan Yazawin)
connects the dynasty's origins to the clan
of the Buddha and the first Buddhist king
Maha Sammata (မဟာ သမ္မတ).[8][9]

The Glass Palace Chronicle traces the

origins of the Pagan kingdom to India
during the 9th century BC, more than
three centuries before the Buddha was
born. Abhiraja (အဘိရာဇာ)of the Sakya
clan (သကျ သာကီဝင် မင်းမျိုး) – the clan
of the Buddha – left his homeland with
followers in 850 BC after military defeat
by the neighbouring kingdom of
Panchala (ပဉ္စာလရာဇ်). They settled at
Tagaung in present-day northern
Myanmar and founded a kingdom. The
chronicle does not claim that he had
arrived in an empty land, only that he was
the first king.[10]

Abhiraja had two sons. The elder son

Kanyaza Gyi (ကံရာဇာကြီး) ventured
south, and in 825 BC founded his own
kingdom in what is today Arakan. The
younger son Kanyaza Nge (ကံရာဇာငယ်)
succeeded his father, and was followed
by a dynasty of 31 kings, and then
another dynasty of 17 kings. Some three
and a half centuries later, in 483 BC,
scions of Tagaung founded yet another
kingdom much farther down the
Irrawaddy at Sri Ksetra, near modern
Pyay (Prome). Sri Ksetra lasted nearly six
centuries, and was succeeded in turn by
the Kingdom of Pagan.[10] The Glass
Palace Chronicle goes on to relate that
around 107 AD, Thamoddarit (သမုဒ္ဒရာဇ်),
nephew of the last king of Sri Ksetra,
founded the city of Pagan (formally,
Arimaddana-pura (အရိမဒ္ဒနာပူရ), lit. "the
City that Tramples on Enemies").[11] The
site reportedly was visited by the Buddha
himself during his lifetime, and it was
where he allegedly pronounced that a
great kingdom would arise at this very
location 651 years after his death.[12]
Thamoddarit was followed by a
caretaker, and then Pyusawhti in 167 AD.
The chronicle narratives then merge, and
agree that a dynasty of kings followed
Pyusawhti. King Pyinbya (ပျဉ်ပြား)
fortified the city in 849 AD.[13]

Scholarly reconstruction

Southeast Asia around 700 CE

Modern scholarship holds that the Pagan

dynasty was founded by the Mranma of
the Nanzhao Kingdom in the mid-to-late
9th century AD; that the earlier parts of
the chronicle are the histories and
legends of Pyu people, the earliest
inhabitants of Myanmar of whom records
are extant; and that Pagan kings had
adopted the Pyu histories and legends as
their own. Indeed, the Mranma and Pyu
people became mixed after years of
immigration and settlement.

The earliest archaeological evidence of

civilisation far dates to 11,000 BC.[14]
Archaeological evidence shows that as
early as the 2nd century BC the Pyu had
built water-management systems along
secondary streams in central and
northern parts of the Irrawaddy basin and
had founded one of Southeast Asia's
earliest urban centres. By the early
centuries AD, several walled cities and
towns, including Tagaung, the birthplace
of the first Burman kingdom according to
the chronicles, had emerged. The
architectural and artistic evidence
indicates the Pyu realm's contact with
Indian culture by the 4th century AD. The
city-states boasted kings and palaces,
moats and massive wooden gates, and
always 12 gates for each of the signs of
the zodiac, one of the many enduring
patterns that would continue until the
British occupation. Sri Ksetra emerged as
the premier Pyu city-state in the 7th
century AD. Although the size of the city-
states and the scale of political
organisation grew during the 7th to early
9th centuries, no sizeable kingdom had
yet emerged by the 9th century.[10][15]

According to a reconstruction by G.H.

Luce, the millennium-old Pyu realm came
crashing down under repeated attacks by
the Nanzhao Kingdom of Yunnan
between the 750s and 830s AD. Like that
of the Pyu, the original home of Burmans
prior to Yunnan is believed to be in
present-day Qinghai and Gansu
provinces.[16][17][18] After the Nanzhao
attacks had greatly weakened the Pyu
city-states, large numbers of Burman
warriors and their families first entered
the Pyu realm in the 830s and 840s, and
settled at the confluence of the
Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers,[19]
perhaps to help the Nanzhao pacify the
surrounding countryside.[20] Indeed, the
naming system of the early Pagan kings
—Pyusawhti and his descendants for six
generations—was identical to that of the
Nanzhao kings where the last name of
the father became the first name of the
son. The chronicles date these early
kings to between the 2nd and 5th
centuries AD, scholars to between the 8th
and 10th centuries CE.[21][22][23] (A
minority view led by Htin Aung contends
that the arrival of Burmans may have
been a few centuries earlier, perhaps the
early 7th century.[24] The earliest human
settlement at Bagan is radiocarbon dated
to c. 650 AD. But evidence is inconclusive
to prove that it was specifically a Burman
(and not just another Pyu) settlement.)[25]

Thant Myint-U summarises that "the

Nanzhao Empire had washed up on the
banks of the Irrawaddy, and would find a
new life, fused with an existing and
ancient culture, to produce one of the
most impressive little kingdoms of the
medieval world. From this fusion would
result the Burmese people, and the
foundations of modern Burmese
culture."[22]
Early Pagan

The Tharabha Gate at Bagan (Pagan),

the only remaining section of the old
walls. The main walls are dated to c.
1020 and the earliest pieces of the
walls to c. 980.

Pagan realm at
Anawrahta's accession in
1044

Evidence shows that the actual pace of

Burman migration into the Pyu realm was
gradual. Indeed, no firm indications have
been found at Sri Ksetra or at any other
Pyu site to suggest a violent overthrow.
Radiocarbon dating shows that human
activity existed until c. 870 at Halin, the
Pyu city reportedly destroyed by an 832
Nanzhao raid.[26] The region of Pagan
received waves of Burman settlements in
the mid-to-late 9th century, and perhaps
well into the 10th century. Though
Hmannan states that Pagan was fortified
in 849—or more accurately, 876 after the
Hmannan dates are adjusted to King
Anawrahta's inscriptionally verified
accession date of 1044—the chronicle
reported date is likely the date of
foundation, not fortification. Radiocarbon
dating of Pagan's walls points to c. 980
at the earliest.[27] (If an earlier
fortification did exist, it must have been
constructed using less durable materials
such as mud.) Likewise, inscriptional
evidence of the earliest Pagan kings
points to 956. The earliest mention of
Pagan in external sources occurs in Song
Chinese records, which report that
envoys from Pagan visited the Song
capital Bianjing in 1004. Mon inscriptions
first mentioned Pagan in 1093,
respectively.[28][29]

Below is a partial list of early Pagan kings

as reported by Hmannan, shown in
comparison with Hmannan dates
adjusted to 1044 and the list of
Zatadawbon Yazawin (the Royal
Horoscopes Chronicle).[30][31] Prior to
Anawrahta, inscriptional evidence exists
thus far only for Nyaung-u Sawrahan and
Kunhsaw Kyaunghpyu. The list starts
from Pyinbya, the fortifier of Pagan
according to Hmannan.

Reign per Hmannan per Zatadawbon

Monarch Relationship
Yazawin / (adjusted) Yazawin

Pyinbya 846–878 / 874–906 846–876

Tannet 878–906 / 906–934 876–904 Son

Sale Ngahkwe 906–915 / 934–943 904–934 Usurper

Theinhko 915–931 / 943–959 934–956 Son

Nyaung-u Sawrahan 931–964 / 959–992 956–1001 Usurper

964–986 / 992–
Kunhsaw Kyaunghpyu 1001–1021 Son of Tannet
1014

986–992 / 1014– Son of Nyaung-u

Kyiso 1021–1038
1020 Sawrahan

992–1017 / 1020–
Sokkate 1038–1044 Brother
1044

1017–1059 / 1044– Son of Kunhsaw

Anawrahta 1044–1077
1086 Kyaunghpyu
By the mid-10th century, Burmans at
Pagan had expanded irrigation-based
cultivation while borrowing extensively
from the Pyus' predominantly Buddhist
culture. Pagan's early iconography,
architecture and scripts suggest little
difference between early Burman and
Pyu cultural forms. Moreover, no sharp
ethnic distinction between Burmans and
linguistically linked Pyus seems to have
existed.[32] The city was one of several
competing city-states until the late 10th
century when it grew in authority and
grandeur.[32] By Anawrahta's accession in
1044, Pagan had grown into a small
principality—about 320 kilometres
(200 mi) north to south and about 130
kilometres (81 mi) from east to west,
comprising roughly the present districts
of Mandalay, Meiktila, Myingyan,
Kyaukse, Yamethin, Magwe, Sagaing, and
the riverine portions of Minbu and
Pakkoku. To the north lay the Nanzhao
Kingdom, and to the east still largely
uninhabited Shan Hills, to the south and
the west Pyus, and farther south still,
Mons.[33] The size of the principality is
about 6% of that of modern
Burma/Myanmar.
Pagan Empire

Statue of King Anawrahta in front of

the DSA

In December 1044, a Pagan prince

named Anawrahta came to power. Over
the next three decades, he turned this
small principality into the First Burmese
Empire—the "charter polity" that formed
the basis of modern-day
Burma/Myanmar.[34] Historically
verifiable Burmese history begins with
his accession.[35]

Formation

Pagan Empire under

Anawrahta; Minimal, if
any, control over Arakan;
Pagan's suzerainty over
Arakan confirmed four
decades after his death.

Anawrahta proved an energetic king. His

acts as king were to strengthen his
kingdom's economic base. In the first
decade of his reign, he invested much
effort into turning the arid parched lands
of central Myanmar into a rice granary,
successfully building/enlarging weirs and
canals, mainly around the Kyaukse
district,[36] east of Pagan. The newly
irrigated regions attracted people, giving
him an increased manpower base. He
graded every town and village according
to the levy it could raise. The region,
known as Ledwin (လယ်တွင်း, lit. "rice
country"), became the granary, the
economic key of the north country.
History shows that one who gained
control of Kyaukse became kingmaker in
Upper Myanmar.[33]

By the mid-1050s, Anawrahta's reforms

had turned Pagan into a regional power,
and he looked to expand. Over the next
ten years, he founded the Pagan Empire,
the Irrawaddy valley at the core,
surrounded by tributary states.[37]
Anawrahta began his campaigns in the
nearer Shan Hills, and extended
conquests to Lower Myanmar down to
the Tenasserim coast to Phuket and
North Arakan.[22] Estimates of the extent
of his empire vary greatly. The Burmese
and Siamese chronicles report an empire
which covered the present-day Myanmar
and northern Thailand. The Siamese
chronicles assert that Anawrahta
conquered the entire Menam valley, and
received tribute from the Khmer king.
One Siamese chronicle states that
Anawrahta's armies invaded the Khmer
kingdom and sacked the city of Angkor,
and another one goes so far as to say
that Anawrahta even visited Java to
receive his tribute.[37]

Archaeological evidence however

confirms only a smaller empire of the
Irrawaddy valley and nearer periphery.
Anawrahta's victory terracotta votive
tablets emblazoned with his name in
Sanskrit have been found along the
Tenasserim coastline in the south, Katha
in the north, Thazi in the east and Minbu
in the west.[38] In the northeast, a series
of 43 forts Anawrahta established along
the eastern foothills, of which 33 still
exist as villages, reveal the effective
extent of his authority.[39] Moreover, most
scholars attribute Pagan's control of
peripheral regions (Arakan, Shan Hills) to
later kings—Arakan to Alaungsithu, and
cis-Salween Shan Hills to Narapatisithu.
(Even those latter-day kings may not
have had more than nominal control over
the farther peripheral regions. For
example, some scholars such as Victor
Lieberman argue that Pagan did not have
any "effective authority" over Arakan.[40])

At any rate, all scholars accept that

during the 11th century, Pagan
consolidated its hold of Upper Burma,
and established its authority over Lower
Burma. The emergence of Pagan Empire
would have a lasting impact on Burmese
history as well as the history of mainland
Southeast Asia. The conquest of Lower
Burma checked the Khmer Empire's
encroachment into the Tenasserim coast,
secured control of the peninsular ports,
which were transit points between the
Indian Ocean and China, and facilitated
growing cultural exchange with the
external world: Mons of Lower Burma,
India and Ceylon.[2] Equally important
was Anawrahta's conversion to
Theravada Buddhism from his native Ari
Buddhism. The Burmese king provided
the Buddhist school, which had been in
retreat elsewhere in South Asia and
Southeast Asia, a much needed reprieve
and a safe shelter. By the 1070s, Pagan
had emerged as the main Theravada
stronghold. In 1071, it helped to restart
the Theravada Buddhism in Ceylon
whose Buddhist clergy had been wiped
out by the Cholas. Another key
development according to traditional
scholarship was the creation of the
Burmese alphabet from the Mon script in
1058, one year after the conquest of
Thaton.

Cultural synthesis and economic growth

The Ananda Temple

Anawrahta was followed by a line of able
kings who cemented Pagan's place in
history. Pagan entered a golden age that
would last for the next two centuries.
Aside from a few occasional rebellions,
the kingdom was largely peaceful during
the period. King Kyansittha (r. 1084–
1112) successfully melded the diverse
cultural influences introduced into Pagan
by Anawrahta's conquests. He patronised
Mon scholars and artisans who emerged
as the intellectual elite. He appeased the
Pyus by linking his genealogy to the real
and mythical ancestors of Sri Ksetra, the
symbol of the Pyu golden past, and by
calling the kingdom Pyu, even though it
had been ruled by a Burman ruling class.
He supported and favoured Theravada
Buddhism while tolerating other religious
groups. To be sure, he pursued these
policies all the while maintaining the
Burman military rule. By the end of his
28-year reign, Pagan had emerged a
major power alongside the Khmer Empire
in Southeast Asia, recognised as a
sovereign kingdom by the Chinese Song
dynasty, and the Indian Chola dynasty.
Several diverse elements—art,
architecture, religion, language, literature,
ethnic plurality—had begun to
synthesize.[41]

Pagan's rise continued under Alaungsithu

(r. 1112–1167), who focused on
standardising administrative and
economic systems. The king, also known
as Sithu I, actively expanded frontier
colonies and built new irrigation systems
throughout the kingdom. He also
introduced standardised weights and
measures throughout the country to
assist administration as well as trade.
The standardisation provided an impetus
for the monetisation of Pagan's economy,
the full impact of which however would
not be felt until later in the 12th
century.[42] The kingdom prospered from
increased agricultural output as well as
from inland and maritime trading
networks. Much of the wealth was
devoted to temple building. Temple
building projects, which began in earnest
during Kyansittha's reign, became
increasingly grandiose, and began to
transition into a distinctively Burman
architectural style from earlier Pyu and
Mon norms. By the end of Sithu I's reign,
Pagan enjoyed a more synthesised
culture, an efficient government and a
prosperous economy. However a
corresponding growth in population also
put pressure on "the fixed relationship
between productive land and population",
forcing the later kings to expand.[41]
Zenith

Pagan Empire during

Sithu II's reign. Burmese
chronicles also claim
Kengtung and Chiang
Mai. Core areas shown in
darker yellow. Peripheral
areas in light yellow.
Pagan incorporated key
ports of Lower Myanmar
into its core
administration by the
13th century

Pagan plains today

Pagan reached the height of political and

administrative development during the
reigns of Narapatisithu (Sithu II; r. 1174–
1211) and Htilominlo (r. 1211–1235). The
Sulamani Temple, Gawdawpalin Temple,
Mahabodhi Temple, and Htilominlo
Temple were built during their reigns.[43]
The kingdom's borders expanded to its
greatest extent. Military organisation and
success reached their zenith.
Monumental architecture achieved a
qualitative and quantitative standard that
subsequent dynasties tried to emulate
but never succeeded in doing. The court
finally developed a complex organisation
that became the model for later
dynasties. the agricultural economy
reached its potential in Upper Myanmar.
The Buddhist clergy, the sangha, enjoyed
one of its most wealthy periods. Civil and
criminal laws were codified in the
vernacular, Burmese, to become the
basic jurisprudence for subsequent
ages.[44]

Sithu II formally founded the Palace

Guards in 1174, the first extant record of
a standing army, and pursued an
expansionist policy. Over his 27-year
reign, Pagan's influence reached further
south to the Strait of Malacca,[45] at least
to the Salween river in the east and
below the current China border in the
farther north.[2][3] (Burmese chronicles
also claim trans-Salween Shan states,
including Kengtung and Chiang Mai.)
Continuing his grandfather Sithu I's
policies, Sithu II expanded the
agricultural base of the kingdom with
new manpower from the conquered
areas, ensuring the needed wealth for a
growing royalty and officialdom. Pagan
dispatched governors to supervise more
closely ports in Lower Myanmar and the
peninsula.[2] In the early 13th century,
Pagan, alongside the Khmer Empire, was
one of two main empires in mainland
Southeast Asia.[4]

His reign also saw the rise of Burmese

culture which finally emerged from the
shadows of Mon and Pyu cultures. With
the Burman leadership of the kingdom
now unquestioned, the term Mranma
(Burmans) was openly used in Burmese
language inscriptions. Burmese became
the primary written language of the
kingdom, replacing Pyu and Mon.[46] His
reign also saw the realignment of
Burmese Buddhism with Ceylon's
Mahavihara school.[47] The Pyus receded
into the background, and by the early
13th century, had largely assumed the
Burman ethnicity.

Decline

Cumulative donations to the Sangha in 25-year

periods
Sithu II's success in state building
created stability and prosperity
throughout the kingdom. His immediate
successors Htilominlo and Kyaswa (r.
1235–1249) were able to live off the
stable and bountiful conditions he
passed on with little state-building on
their part.[48] Htilomino hardly did any
governing. A devout Buddhist and
scholar, the king gave up the command
of the army, and left administration to a
privy council of ministers, the forebear of
the Hluttaw. But the seeds of Pagan's
decline were sowed during this
seemingly idyllic period. The state had
stopped expanding, but the practice of
donating tax-free land to religion had not.
The continuous growth of tax-free
religious wealth greatly reduced the tax
base of the kingdom. Indeed, Htilominlo
was the last of the temple builders
although most of his temples were in
remote lands not in the Pagan region,
reflecting the deteriorating state of royal
treasury.[49]

By the mid-13th century, the problem had

worsened considerably. The Upper
Myanmar heartland over which Pagan
exercised most political control had run
out of easily reclaimed irrigable tracts.
Yet their fervent desire to accumulate
religious merit for better reincarnations
made it impossible for Pagan kings to
halt entirely their own or other courtiers'
donations. The crown did try to reclaim
some of these lands by periodically
purging the clergy in the name of
Buddhist purification, and seizing
previously donated lands. Although some
of the reclamation efforts were
successful, powerful Buddhist clergy by
and large successfully resisted such
attempts.[6][7] Ultimately, the rate of
reclamation fell behind the rate at which
such lands were dedicated to the sangha.
(The problem was exacerbated to a
smaller degree by powerful ministers,
who exploited succession disputes and
accumulated their own lands at the
expense of the crown.) By 1280, between
one and two-thirds of Upper Myanmar's
cultivatable land had been donated to
religion. Thus the throne lost resources
needed to retain the loyalty of courtiers
and military servicemen, inviting a
vicious circle of internal disorders and
external challenges by Mons, Mongols
and Shans.[6]
Fall

Mongol invasions

Rise of small kingdoms

after the fall of Pagan
Empire c. 1310. Tai-Shan
Realm of Shan states,
Lan Na and Sukhothai as
well as Ramanya in Lower
Myanmar were Mongol
vassals. Myinsaing was
the only non-Mongol
vassal state in the region.

The first signs of disorder appeared soon

after Narathihapate's accession in 1256.
The inexperienced king faced revolts in
Arakanese state of Macchagiri (present-
day Kyaukpyu District)[note 1] in the west,
and Martaban (Mottama) in the south.
The Martaban rebellion was easily put
down but Macchagiri required a second
expedition before it too was put down.[50]
The calm did not last long. Martaban
again revolted in 1285. This time, Pagan
could not do anything to retake Martaban
because it was facing an existential
threat from the north. The Mongols of the
Yuan dynasty demanded tribute, in 1271
and again in 1273. When Narathihapate
refused both times, the Mongols under
Kublai Khan systematically invaded the
country. The first invasion in 1277
defeated the Burmese at the battle of
Ngasaunggyan, and secured their hold of
Kanngai (modern-day Yingjiang, Yunnan,
112 kilometres (70 mi) north of Bhamo).
In 1283–85, their forces moved south
and occupied down to Hanlin. Instead of
defending the country, the king fled
Pagan for Lower Myanmar where he was
assassinated by one of his sons in
1287.[51]

The Mongols invaded again in 1287.

Recent research indicates that Mongol
armies may not have reached Pagan
itself, and that even if they did, the
damage they inflicted was probably
minimal.[6] But the damage was already
done. All the vassal states of Pagan
revolted right after the king's death, and
went their own way. In the south, Wareru,
the man who had seized the
governorship of Martaban in 1285,
consolidated Mon-speaking regions of
Lower Myanmar, and declared
Ramannadesa (Land of the Mon)
independent on 30 January 1287.[note 2] In
the west too, Arakan stopped paying
tribute.[52] The chronicles report that the
eastern territories including trans-
Salween states of Keng Hung, Kengtung
and Chiang Mai stopped paying tribute[53]
although most scholars attribute Pagan's
limits to the Salween. At any rate, the
250-year-old Pagan Empire had ceased
to exist.
Disintegration and fall

After their 1287 invasion, the Mongols

continued to control down to Tagaung
but refused to fill the power vacuum they
had created farther south. Indeed,
Emperor Kublai Khan never sanctioned
an actual occupation of Pagan.[52] His
real aim appeared to have been "to keep
the entire region of Southeast Asia
broken and fragmented."[54] At Pagan,
one of Narathihapate's sons Kyawswa
emerged king of Pagan in May 1289. But
the new "king" controlled just a small
area around the capital, and had no real
army. The real power in Upper Myanmar
now rested with three brothers, who were
former Pagan commanders, of nearby
Myinsaing. When the Hanthawaddy
Kingdom of Lower Myanmar became a
vassal of Sukhothai in 1293/94, it was
the brothers, not Kyawswa, that sent a
force to reclaim the former Pagan
territory in 1295–96. Though the army
was driven back, it left no doubt as to
who held the real power in central
Myanmar. In the following years, the
brothers, especially the youngest
Thihathu, increasingly acted like
sovereigns.[55]

To check the increasing power of the

three brothers, Kyawswa submitted to
the Mongols in January 1297, and was
recognised by the Mongol emperor
Temür Khan as viceroy of Pagan on 20
March 1297. The brothers resented the
new arrangement as a Mongol vassalage
as it directly reduced their power. On 17
December 1297, the three brothers
overthrew Kyawswa, and founded the
Myinsaing Kingdom. The Mongols did
not know about the dethronement until
June–July 1298.[56] In response, the
Mongols launched another invasion,
reaching Myinsaing on 25 January 1301,
but could not break through. The
besiegers took the bribes by the three
brothers, and withdrew on 6 April
1301.[57][58] The Mongol government at
Yunnan executed their commanders but
sent no more invasions. They withdrew
entirely from Upper Myanmar starting on
4 April 1303.[55][59]

By then, the city of Pagan, once home to

200,000 people,[60] had been reduced to a
small town, never to regain its
preeminence. (It survived into the 15th
century as a human settlement.) The
brothers placed one of Kyawswa's sons
as the governor of Pagan. Anawrahta's
line continued to rule Pagan as governors
under Myinsaing, Pinya and Ava
Kingdoms until 1368/69. The male side
of Pagan ended there although the
female side passed into Pinya and Ava
royalty.[61] But the Pagan line continued
to be claimed by successive Burmese
dynasties down to the last Burmese
dynasty Konbaung.[62]

Government

Ruins of the old Pagan Palace

Pagan's government can be generally

described by the mandala system in
which the sovereign exercised direct
political authority in the core region (pyi,
lit. "country", ပြည်, [pjì]), and administered
farther surrounding regions as tributary
vassal states (naingngans, lit. "conquered
lands", နိုင်ငံ, [nàiɴŋàɴ]). In general, the
crown's authority diffused away with the
increasing distance from the
capital.[63][64] Each state was
administered at three general levels:
taing (တိုင်း, province), myo (မြို့, town),
and ywa (ရွာ, village), with the high king's
court at the centre. The kingdom
consisted of at least 14 taings.[65]

Core region

The core region was the present-day dry

zone of Upper Myanmar, measuring
approximately 150 to 250 kilometres (93
to 155 mi) in radius from the capital. The
region consisted of the capital and the
key irrigated hubs (khayaings, ခရိုင်,
[kʰəjàiɴ]) of Kyaukse and Minbu. Because
of the irrigated hubs, the region
supported the largest population in the
kingdom, which translated into the
largest concentration of royal servicemen
who could be called into military service.
The king directly ruled the capital and its
immediate environs while he appointed
most trusted members of the royal family
to rule Kyaukse and Minbu. Newly settled
dry zone taik (တိုက်, [taiʔ]) areas on the
west bank of the Irrawaddy were
entrusted to the men of lesser rank, as
well as those from powerful local
families known as taik leaders (taik-
thugyis, တိုက်သူကြီး, [taiʔ ðədʑí]). The
governors and taik-leaders lived off
apanage grants and local taxes. But
unlike their frontier counterparts, the core
zone governors did not have much
autonomy because of the close proximity
to the capital.[63][64]

Peripheral regions

Surrounding the core region were the

naingngans or tributary states, governed
by local hereditary rulers as well as
Pagan appointed governors, drawn from
princely or ministerial families. Because
of their farther distances from the
capital, the regions' rulers/governors had
greater autonomy. They were required to
send tributes to the crown but they
generally had a freehand in the rest of the
administration. They were chief justices,
commanders-in-chief, and tax collectors.
They made local officer appointments. In
fact, no evidence of royal censuses or
direct contact between the Pagan court
and headmen beneath the governors has
been found.

Over the course of 250 years, the throne

slowly tried to integrate the most
strategically and economically important
regions—i.e. Lower Myanmar,
Tenasserim, northernmost Irrawaddy
valley—into the core by appointing its
governors in place of hereditary rulers. In
the 12th and 13th centuries, for example,
Pagan made a point of appointing its
governors in the Tenasserim coast to
closely supervise the ports and revenues.
By the second half of the 13th century,
several key ports in Lower Myanmar
(Prome, Bassein, Dala) were all ruled by
senior princes of the royal family.[64][65]
However, the escape of Lower Myanmar
from Upper Myanmar's orbit in the late
13th century proves that the region was
far from fully integrated. History shows
that the region would not be fully
integrated into the core until the late 18th
century.

The royal authority attenuated further in

farther naingngans: Arakan, Chin Hills,
Kachin Hills, and Shan Hills. These were
tributary lands over which the crown only
had a "largely ritual" or nominal
sovereignty. In general, the king of Pagan
received a periodic nominal tribute but
had "no substantive authority", for
example, on such matters as the
selection of deputies, successors, or
levels of taxation.[64] Pagan largely
stayed out of the affairs of these outlying
states, only interfering when there were
outright revolts, such as Arakan and
Martaban in the late 1250s or northern
Kachin Hills in 1277.
Court

Burmese nobles partaking in

equestrian sports

The court was the centre of

administration, representing at once
executive, legislative and judiciary
branches of the government. The
members of the court can be divided into
three general categories: royalty,
ministers, and subordinate officials. At
the top were the high king, princes,
princesses, queens and concubines. The
ministers were usually drawn from more
distant branches of the royal family. Their
subordinates were not royal but usually
hailed from top official families. Titles,
ranks, insignia, fiefs and other such
rewards helped maintain the loyalty-
patronage structure of the court.[66]

The king as the absolute monarch was

the chief executive, legislator and justice
of the land. However, as the kingdom
grew, the king gradually handed over
responsibilities to the court, which
became more extensive and complex,
adding more administrative layers and
officials. In the early 13th century, c.
1211, part of the court evolved into the
king's privy council or Hluttaw. The role
and power of the Hluttaw grew greatly in
the following decades. It came to
manage not only day-to-day affairs but
also military affairs of the kingdom. (No
Pagan king after Sithu II ever took
command of the army again.)[49] The
powerful ministers also became
kingmakers. Their support was an
important factor in the accession of the
last kings of Pagan from Htilominlo (r.
1211–1235) to Kyawswa (r. 1289–1297).

The court was also the chief justice of

the land. Sithu I (r. 1112–1167) was the
first Pagan king to issue an official
collection of judgments, later known as
the Alaungsithu hpyat-hton, to be followed
as precedents by all courts of justice.[67]
A follow-up collection of judgments was
compiled during the reign of Sithu II (r.
1174–1211) by a Mon monk named
Dhammavilasa. As another sign of
delegation of power, Sithu II also
appointed a chief justice and a chief
minister.[68]

Military

Pagan commander Aung

Zwa in the service of
Sithu II

Pagan's military was the origin of the

Royal Burmese Army. The army was
organised into a small standing army of a
few thousand, which defended the
capital and the palace, and a much larger
conscript-based wartime army.
Conscription was based on the kyundaw
system (called the ahmudan system by
later dynasties), which required local
chiefs to supply their predetermined
quota of men from their jurisdiction on
the basis of population in times of war.
This basic system of military
organisation was largely unchanged
down to the precolonial period although
later dynasties, especially the Toungoo
dynasty, did introduce standardisation
and other modifications.
The early Pagan army consisted mainly
of conscripts raised just prior to or during
the times of war. Although historians
believe that earlier kings like Anawrahta
must have had permanent troops on duty
in the palace, the first specific mention of
a standing military structure in the
Burmese chronicles is 1174 when Sithu II
founded the Palace Guards—"two
companies inner and outer, and they kept
watch in ranks one behind the other". The
Palace Guards became the nucleus
round which the mass levy assembled in
war time. Most of the field levy served in
the infantry but the men for the
elephantry, cavalry, and naval corps were
drawn from specific hereditary villages
that specialised in respective military
skills.[69][70] In an era of limited military
specialisation, when the number of
conscripted cultivators offered the best
single indication of military success,
Upper Myanmar with a greater population
was the natural centre of political
gravity.[71]

Various sources and estimates put

Pagan's military strength anywhere
between 30,000 and 60,000 men. One
inscription by Sithu II, who expanded the
empire to its greatest extent, describes
him as the lord of 17,645 soldiers while
another notes 30,000 soldiers and
cavalry under his command.[72] A
Chinese account mentions a Burmese
army of 40,000 to 60,000 (including 800
elephants and 10,000 horses) at the
battle of Ngasaunggyan in 1277.
However, some argue that the Chinese
figures, which came from eye estimates
of a single battle, are greatly
exaggerated. As Harvey puts it: the
Mongols "erred on the side of generosity
as they did not wish to diminish the glory
in defeating superior numbers".[73] But
assuming that the precolonial population
of Myanmar was relatively constant, the
estimates of 40,000 to 60,000 of the
entire military are not improbable, and are
in line with figures given for the Burmese
military between the 16th and 19th
centuries in a variety of sources.[72]

Economy

Pagan's prosperous economy built over 10,000

temples.

The economy of Pagan was based

primarily on agriculture, and to a much
smaller degree, on trade. The growth of
the Pagan Empire and subsequent
development of irrigated lands in new
lands sustained a growth in the number
of population centres and a growing
prosperous economy. The economy also
benefited from the general absence of
warfare that would stunt the economies
of later dynasties. According to Victor
Lieberman, the prosperous economy
supported "a rich Buddhist civilization
whose most spectacular feature was a
dense forest of pagodas, monasteries,
and temples, totaling perhaps 10,000
brick structures, of which the remains of
over 2000 survive."[5]

Agriculture

Development of irrigated lands

Agriculture was the primary engine of the
kingdom from its beginnings in the 9th
century. Burman immigrants are believed
to have either introduced new water
management techniques or greatly
enhanced existing Pyu system of weirs,
dams, sluices, and diversionary
barricades.[74] At any rate, the Kyaukse
agricultural basin's development in the
10th and 11th centuries enabled the
kingdom of Pagan to expand beyond the
dry zone of Upper Myanmar, and to
dominate its periphery, including the
maritime Lower Myanmar.[75]

As reconstructed by Michael Aung-Thwin,

G.H. Luce and Than Tun, the main driver
for this agriculture-based economic
expansion was the practice of donating
tax-free lands to the Buddhist clergy. For
some two hundred years between 1050
and 1250, wealthy and powerful
segments of the Pagan society—
members of the royalty, senior court
officials, and wealthy laymen—donated to
the clergy enormous acreages of
agricultural land, along with hereditary
tied cultivators to attain religious merit.
(Both religious lands and cultivators were
permanently tax exempt.) Although it
ultimately became a major burden on the
economy, the practice initially helped
expand the economy for some two
centuries. First, the monastery-temple
complexes, typically located some
distances away from the capital, helped
anchor new population centres for the
throne. Such institutions in turn
stimulated associated artisan,
commercial, and agricultural activities
critical to the general economy.[75]

Secondly, the need to accumulate land

for endowments, as well as for awards
for soldiers and servicemen, drove the
active development of new lands. The
earliest irrigation projects focused on
Kyaukse where Burmans built a large
number of new weirs and diversionary
canals, and Minbu a similarly well-
watered district south of Pagan. After
these hubs had been developed, in the
mid-to-late 12th century, Pagan moved
into as yet undeveloped frontier areas
west of the Irrawaddy and south of
Minbu. These new lands included both
irrigable wet-rice areas and non-irrigable
areas suitable for rain-fed rice, pulses,
sesame, and millet. Agricultural
expansion and temple construction in
turn sustained a market in land and
certain types of labour and materials.
Land reclamation, religious donations,
and building projects expanded slowly
before 1050, increased to 1100,
accelerated sharply with the opening of
new lands between c. 1140 and c. 1210
and continued at a lower level from 1220
to 1300.[75]

By the second half of the 13th century,

Pagan had developed an enormous
amount of cultivated lands. Estimates
based on surviving inscriptions alone
range from 200,000 to 250,000 hectares.
(In comparison, Pagan's contemporary
Angkor relied on its main rice basin of
over 13,000 hectares.) But donations to
the sangha over the 250 years of the
empire accumulated to over 150,000
hectares (over 60%) of the total
cultivated land.[76] Ultimately, the practice
proved unsustainable when the empire
had stopped growing physically, and a
major factor in the empire's downfall.

Trade

Ruins of Pagan

Internal and external trade played an

important but minor role in Pagan's
economy. Trade was not the main engine
of economic growth for much of the
Pagan period although its share of the
economy probably increased in the 13th
century when the agricultural sector
stopped growing. That is not to say that
Pagan did not have any interest in trade.
On the contrary, Pagan closely
administered its peninsular ports, which
were transit points between the Indian
Ocean and China. Maritime trade
provided the court with revenues and
prestige goods (coral, pearls, textiles).
Evidence shows that Pagan imported
silver from Yunnan, and that traded
upland forest products, gems and
perhaps metals with the coast. Still, no
archaeological, textual or inscriptional
evidence to indicate that such exports
supported large numbers of producers or
middlemen in Upper Myanmar itself, or
that trade constituted a large part of the
economy.[77]
Currency

For all the innovations that the Pagan

dynasty introduced, one area that it
regressed was the use of coinage. The
Pyu practice of issuing gold and silver
coinage was not retained.[78] The
common medium of exchange was lump
silver "coinage", followed by gold and
copper lump coinage. Silver came from
domestic mines as well as Yunnan.[75]
The base unit of currency of the silver
kyat (unit) (ကျပ်), which was not a unit of
value but rather a unit of weight at
approximately 16.3293 grams. Other
weight-based units in relation to the kyat
were also in use.[79]
 Unit in kyats

1 mat (မတ်) 0.25

1 bo (ဗိုဟ်) 5

1 viss (ပိဿာ) 100

A kyat, unless specified, always meant a

silver kyat. Other metals were also in use.
The value of other metal currencies vis-a-
vis the silver kyat are shown below.[78][79]

Metal type in silver kyats

1 kyat of gold 10

1 kyat of copper 2

1 kyat of mercury 1.50

The lack of standardised coinage

certainly complicated commerce. For
instance, many types of silver kyats with
varying degrees of purity were in use.
Records show that people also used a
system of barter to conduct
commerce.[78]
Prices

The Htilominlo Temple

Surviving records provide a glimpse of

the kingdom's economic life. A pe (ပယ်,
0.71 hectare) of fertile land near Pagan
cost 20 silver kyats but only 1 to 10 kyats
away from the capital. Construction of a
large temple in the reign of Sithu II cost
44,027 kyats while a large "Indian style"
monastery cost 30,600 kyats.[78]
Manuscripts were rare and extremely
costly. In 1273, a complete set of the
Tripiṭaka cost 3000 kyats.[80]
 Good in silver kyats

1 basket of paddy 0.5

1 viss of cow's milk 0.1

1 viss of honey 1.25

1000 betal nuts 0.75

Culture and society

Demography

Thingyan New Year's festivities

Size of population

Various estimates put the population of

Pagan Empire as anywhere between one
and two and a half million[81] but most
estimates put it between one and a half
and two million at its height.[82] The
number would be closer to the upper end,
assuming that the population of pre-
colonial Burma remained fairly constant.
(The size of population in medieval times
tended to stay flat over the course of
many centuries. England's population
between the 11th and 16th centuries
remained at around 2.25 million, and
China's population until the 17th century
remained between 60 and 100 million for
13 centuries.)[81] Pagan was the most
populous city with an estimated
population of 200,000 prior to the
Mongol invasions.[60]
Ethnic groups

The kingdom was an "ethnic mosaic". In

the late 11th century, ethnic Burmans
were still "a privileged but numerically
limited population", heavily concentrated
in the interior dry zone of Upper Burma.
They co-existed with Pyus, who
dominated the dry zone, until the latter
came to identify themselves as Burmans
by the early 13th century. Inscriptions
also mention a variety of ethnic groups in
and around Upper Burma: Mons, Thets,
Kadus, Sgaws, Kanyans, Palaungs, Was
and Shans. The peoples who lived in the
highland perimeter were collectively
classified as "hill peoples" (taungthus,
တောင်သူ) although Shan migrants were
changing the ethnic makeup of the hill
region. In the south, Mons were dominant
in Lower Burma by the 13th century, if not
earlier.[83] In the west, an Arakanese
ruling class who spoke Burmese
emerged.[84]

To be sure, the notion of ethnicity in pre-

colonial Burma was highly fluid, heavily
influenced by language, culture, class,
locale, and indeed political power. People
changed their in-group identification,
depending on the social context. The
success and longevity of the Pagan
Empire sustained the spread of Burman
ethnicity and culture in Upper Burma in a
process that came to be called
Burmanization, which Lieberman
describes as "assimilation by bi-lingual
peoples, eager to identify with the
imperial elite". According to Lieberman,
Pagan's imperial power enabled the
"construction of Burman cultural
hegemony", evidenced by "the growth of
Burmese writing, the concomitant decline
in Pyu (and perhaps Mon) culture, new
trends in art and architecture, and the
expansion of Burmese-speaking
cultivators into new lands".[83]

Nonetheless, by the end of Pagan period,

the process of Burmanization, which
would continue into the 19th century, and
eventually blanket the entire lowlands,
was still in an early stage. The first extant
Burmese language reference to
"Burmans" appeared only in 1190, and
the first reference to Upper Burma as "the
land of the Burmans" (Myanma pyay) in
1235.[83] The notion of ethnicity
continued to be highly fluid, and closely
tied to political power. While the rise of
Ava ensured the continued spread of
Burman ethnicity in post-Pagan Upper
Burma, the similar emergence of non-
Burmese speaking kingdoms elsewhere
helped develop ethnic consciousness
closely tied to respective ruling classes in
Lower Burma, Shan states and Arakan.
For example, according to Lieberman and
Aung-Thwin, "the very notion of Mons as
a coherent ethnicity may have emerged
only in the 14th and 15th centuries after
the collapse of Upper Burman
hegemony".[85]

Social classes

Pagan's society was highly stratified

among different social classes. At the
top of the pyramid were the royalty
(immediate royal family), followed by the
upper officialdom (the extended royal
family and the court), lower officialdom,
artisans and crown service groups, and
the commoners. The Buddhist clergy was
not a class in the secular society but
nonetheless represented an important
social class.[86]

The majority of the people belonged to

one of four broad groups of commoners.
First, royal servicemen were bondsmen
(kyundaw, ကျွန်တော်) of the king, and
were often assigned to individual
headmen and officials who acted as the
king's representatives. They received land
grants from the crown, and were exempt
from most personal taxes in exchange
for regular or military service. Second,
Athi (အသည်) commoners lived not on
royal land but on communally-held land,
and owed no regular royal service but
paid substantial head taxes. Private
bondsmen (kyun, ကျွန်) owed labour only
to their individual patron, and lay outside
the system of royal obligation. Finally,
religious bondsmen (hpaya-kyun,
ဘုရားကျွန်) were also private bondsmen
who owed labour only to monasteries
and temples but not to the crown.[87]

Of the three bonded (non-athi) classes,

royal bondsmen and religious bondsmen
were hereditary while private bondsmen
were not. A private bondsman's servitude
to his patron stood until his debt was
fully repaid. A bondman's obligations
ceased with death, and could not be
perpetuated down to his descendants.
On the other hand, royal servicemen
(kyundaw) were hereditary, and were
exempt from personal taxes in exchange
for royal service. Similarly, religious
servicemen (hpaya-kyun) were hereditary,
and were exempt from personal taxes
and royal service in exchange for
maintaining the affairs of monasteries
and temples. Unlike royal servicemen or
even athi commoners, the religious
bondsmen could not be conscripted into
military service.[88]

Language and literature

 Myazedi in Pyu in Mon in Pali
inscription in
the Burmese
alphabet

Languages

The primary language of the ruling class

of Pagan was Burmese, a Tibeto-Burman
language related to both the Pyu
language and the language of the ruling
class of Nanzhao. But the spread of the
language to the masses lagged behind
the founding of the Pagan Empire by 75
to 150 years. In the early Pagan era, both
Pyu and Mon were lingua francas of the
Irrawaddy valley. Pyu was the dominant
language of Upper Myanmar while Mon
was sufficiently prestigious for Pagan
rulers to employ the language frequently
for inscriptions and perhaps court
usages.[89] Inscriptional evidence
indicates that Burmese became the
lingua franca of the kingdom only in the
early 12th century, and perhaps the late
12th century when the use of Pyu and
Mon in official usage declined. Mon
continued to flourish in Lower Myanmar
but Pyu as a language had died out by
the early 13th century.[46][83]

Another important development in

Burmese history and Burmese language
was the rise of Pali, the liturgical
language of Theravada Buddhism. The
use of Sanskrit, which had been prevalent
in the Pyu realm and in the early Pagan
era, declined after Anawrahta's
conversion to Theravada Buddhism.[90]

Scripts

Modern Burmese
alphabet. The old
Burmese style of writing
did not have cursive
features, which are
hallmarks of the modern
script.

The spread of Burmese language was

accompanied by that of the Burmese
alphabet. Mainstream scholarship holds
that the Burmese alphabet was
developed from the Mon script in 1058, a
year after Anawrahta's conquest of the
Thaton Kingdom.[91] Burmese script may
have instead been derived from the Pyu
script in the 10th century based on
whether the Mon script found in
Myanmar was sufficiently different from
the older Mon script found in the Mon
homelands of Dvaravati and on whether a
recast 18th century copy of an original
stone inscription is permissible as
evidence.[92]

Literature

Frescoes of Buddhist
Jataka stories at a Pagan
temple
Whatever the origin of the Burmese
alphabet may be, writing in Burmese was
still a novelty in the 11th century. A
written Burmese language became
dominant in court only in the 12th
century. For much of the Pagan period,
written materials needed to produce
large numbers of literate monks and
students in the villages simply did not
exist. According to Than Tun, even in the
13th century, "the art of writing was then
still in its infancy with the Burmans".
Manuscripts were rare and extremely
costly. As late as 1273, a complete set of
the Tripiṭaka cost 3000 kyats of silver,
which could buy over 2000 hectares of
paddy fields. Literacy in Burmese, not to
mention Pali, was the effective monopoly
of the aristocracy and their monastic
peers.[80]

At Pagan and at main provincial centres,

Buddhist temples supported an
increasingly sophisticated Pali
scholarship, which specialised in
grammar and philosophical-
psychological (abhidhamma) studies, and
which reportedly won the admiration of
Sinhalese experts. Besides religious
texts, Pagan's monks read works in a
variety of languages on prosody,
phonology, grammar, astrology, alchemy,
and medicine, and developed an
independent school of legal studies.
Most students, and probably the leading
monks and nuns, came from aristocratic
families.[93] At any rate, local illiteracy
probably prevented the sort of detailed
village censuses and legal rulings that
became a hallmark of post-1550
Toungoo administration.[80]

Religion

Statute of Vishnu at the

Nat-Hlaung Kyaung
Temple

The religion of Pagan was fluid, syncretic

and by later standards, unorthodox—
largely a continuation of religious trends
in the Pyu era where Theravada
Buddhism co-existed with Mahayana
Buddhism, Tantric Buddhism, various
Hindu (Saivite, and Vaishana) schools as
well as native animist (nat) traditions.
While the royal patronage of Theravada
Buddhism since the mid-11th century
had enabled the Buddhist school to
gradually gain primacy, and produce over
10,000 temples in Pagan alone in its
honour, other traditions continued to
thrive throughout the Pagan period to
degrees later unseen. While several
Mahayana, Tantric, Hindu and animist
elements have remained in Burmese
Buddhism to the present day, in the
Pagan era, however, "Tantric, Saivite, and
Vaishana elements enjoyed greater elite
influence than they would later do,
reflecting both the immaturity of
Burmese literary culture and its
indiscriminate receptivity to non-Burman
traditions". In this period, "heretical" did
not mean non-Buddhist, merely unfaithful
to one's own scriptures, whether
Brahmanic, Buddhist or whatever.[93]
Theravada Buddhism

Ananda Temple's Kakusandha Koṇāgamana Gautama Buddha

Kassapa Buddha Buddha – North Buddha – East – West facing
– South facing facing facing

One of the most enduring developments

in Burmese history was the gradual
emergence of Theravada Buddhism as
the primary faith of the Pagan Empire. A
key turning point came c. 1056 when the
Buddhist school won the royal patronage
of an ascendant empire with Anawrahta's
conversion from his native Tantric
Buddhism. According to mainstream
scholarship, Anawrahta proceeded to
revitalise Theravada Buddhism in Upper
Myanmar with help from the conquered
kingdom of Thaton in 1057 in Lower
Myanmar. More recently, however, Aung-
Thwin has argued forcefully that
Anawrahta's conquest of Thaton is a
post-Pagan legend without contemporary
evidence, that Lower Myanmar in fact
lacked a substantial independent polity
prior to Pagan's expansion, and that the
Mon influence on the interior is greatly
exaggerated. Instead, he argues that it is
more likely that Burmans borrowed
Theravada Buddhism from their
neighbour Pyus, or directly from India.[32]
The Theravada school prevalent in the
early and mid Pagan periods, like in the
Pyu realm, was probably derived from the
Andhra region in southeast India,
associated with the famous Theravada
Buddhist scholar, Buddhaghosa.[94][95] It
was the predominant Theravada school
in Myanmar until the late 12th century
when Shin Uttarajiva led the realignment
with Ceylon's Mahavihara school.[96]

To be sure, the Theravada Buddhist

scene of the Pagan era had little
semblance to those of Toungoo and
Konbaung periods. Much of the
institutional mechanisms prevalent in
later centuries simply did not yet exist.
For instance, in the 19th century, a
network of Theravada monasteries in
every village used Burmese-language
manuscripts to provide youths from
diverse backgrounds with basic Buddhist
literacy. This was a reciprocal exchange:
monks relied on villagers for their daily
food, while villagers depended on monks
for schooling, sermons, and an
opportunity to gain merit by giving alms
and inducting their young men into the
community of monks, the sangha. Such
arrangements produced a male literacy
rates of over 50 percent, and remarkable
levels of textual Buddhist knowledge on
the village level. But in the Pagan era, key
19th century elements were not yet in
place. No village-level network of
monasteries or meaningful
interdependence between the monks and
villagers existed. The monks relied on the
royal donations, and those from major
sects, which had vast landed holdings,
did not have to rely on daily alms,
inhibiting close interaction with villagers.
The low levels of interaction in turn
retarded literacy in Burmese, and limited
most commoners' understanding of
Buddhism to non-textual means:
paintings at the great temples, pageants,
folkloric versions of the Jataka stories of
the Buddha's life, etc. Most commoners
retained the worship of nat spirits and
other beliefs.[97]
Other traditions

Mt. Popa, home of the pantheon of

nats

Other traditions also continued to thrive

not only at the village level but also at the
nominally Theravadin court. One
powerful group was the Forest Dweller or
Ari monks, who enjoyed wide influence at
the Pagan court. Contemporary
inscriptions show that the Aris ate
evening meals, and presided over public
ceremonies where they drank liquor and
where cattle and other animals were
sacrificed—activities considered
scandalous by Burmese Buddhist norms
of the 18th and 19th centuries. Aris
reportedly also enjoyed a form of ius
primae noctis, at least prior to Anawrahta.
(Though Anawrahta is said to have driven
out the Aris from his court, they were
certainly back at the court by the late
Pagan period, and continued to be a
presence at the later Burmese courts
down to the Ava period.) Ari Buddhism
itself was a mix of Tantric Buddhism and
local traditions. For example, ceremonial
animal slaughter and alcohol
consumption long antedated the
Burmans' arrival, and continued in remote
parts of mainland and maritime
Southeast Asia until recent times.[93]
The state also accommodated the
powerful animist traditions, as shown in
the official spirit (nat) propitiation
ceremonies, and in the court's
sponsorship of an elaborate nat
pantheon that sought to assimilate local
deities and persons of prowess to a more
unified cultus. The Burmans may have
derived the concept of an official
pantheon from Mon tradition. Likewise,
the early Pagan court worshiped snakes
(nagas) venerated in pre-Buddhist
times.[93] To judge by 14th-century
patterns, sacrifices to nat spirits
mediated by shamans, were still a central
village ritual. As elsewhere in Southeast
Asia, homosexuals or transvestites (who
already inhabited two "incompatible"
realms) as well as women with
appropriate powers provided a shamanic
bridge from the human world to that of
the spirits.[97]

Architecture

Design of 19th century Mandalay Palace followed

its Pagan era predecessors

Bagan is well known today for its

architecture, and over 2000 remaining
temples that dot the modern-day Pagan
(Bagan) plains today. Other, non-religious
aspects of Pagan architecture were
equally important to later Burmese
states.

Irrigation and city planning

Burman immigrants are believed to have

either introduced new water
management techniques or greatly
enhanced existing Pyu system of weirs,
dams, sluices, and diversionary
barricades. The techniques of building
dams, canals and weirs found in pre-
colonial Upper Myanmar trace their
origins to the Pyu era and the Pagan
era.[74][98] Pagan's several water
management projects in the dry zone
provided Upper Myanmar with an
enduring economic base to dominate the
rest of the country.

In the areas of city planning and temple

design, Pagan architecture borrowed
heavily from existing Pyu architectural
practices, which in turn were based on
various Indian styles. Pagan-era city
planning largely followed Pyu patterns,
the most notable being the use of 12
gates, for each of the signs of the
zodiac.[98]

Stupas

Pagan stands out not only for the sheer

number of religious edifices but also for
the magnificent architecture of the
buildings, and their contribution to
Burmese temple design. Pagan temples
fall into one of two broad categories: the
stupa-style solid temple and the gu-style
(ဂူ) hollow temple.

The Lawkananda (pre- The Dhammayazika (12th

Bupaya (pre-11th 11th century) The Shwezigon century)
Evolution of the
century) (11th century)
Burmese stupa:
Bawbawgyi
Pagoda (7th
century Sri
Ksetra)

The Mingalazedi (13th

century)
A stupa, also called a pagoda, is a
massive structure, typically with a relic
chamber inside. The Pagan stupas or
pagodas evolved from earlier Pyu
designs, which in turn were based on the
stupa designs of the Andhra region,
particularly Amaravati Stupa and
Nagarjunakonda in present-day
southeastern India, and to a smaller
extent to Ceylon.[98] The Pagan-era
stupas in turn were the prototypes for
later Burmese stupas in terms of
symbolism, form and design, building
techniques and even materials.[99]

Originally, an Indian/Ceylonese stupa had

a hemispheric body (Pali: anda, "the egg")
on which a rectangular box surrounded
by a stone balustrade (harmika) was set.
Extending up from the top of the stupa
was a shaft supporting several
ceremonial umbrellas. The stupa is a
representation of the Buddhist cosmos:
its shape symbolises Mount Meru while
the umbrella mounted on the brickwork
represents the world's axis.[100]

The original Indic design was gradually

modified first by the Pyu, and then by
Burmans at Pagan where the stupa
gradually developed a longer, cylindrical
form. The earliest Pagan stupas such as
the Bupaya (c. 9th century) were the
direct descendants of the Pyu style at Sri
Ksetra. By the 11th century, the stupa had
developed into a more bell-shaped form
in which the parasols morphed into a
series of increasingly smaller rings
placed on one top of the other, rising to a
point. On top the rings, the new design
replaced the harmika with a lotus bud.
The lotus bud design then evolved into
the "banana bud", which forms the
extended apex of most Burmese
pagodas. Three or four rectangular
terraces served as the base for a pagoda,
often with a gallery of terra-cotta tiles
depicting Buddhist jataka stories. The
Shwezigon Pagoda and the Shwesandaw
Pagoda are the earliest examples of this
type.[100] Examples of the trend toward a
more bell-shaped design gradually
gained primacy as seen in the
Dhammayazika Pagoda (late 12th
century) and the Mingalazedi Pagoda
(late 13th century).[101]

Hollow temples

"One-face"-style Gawdawpalin Temple (left) and "four-face" Dhammayangyi Temple

In contrast to the stupas, the hollow gu-

style temple is a structure used for
meditation, devotional worship of the
Buddha and other Buddhist rituals. The
gu temples come in two basic styles:
"one-face" design and "four-face" design
—essentially one main entrance and four
main entrances. Other styles such as
five-face and hybrids also exist. The one-
face style grew out of 2nd century
Beikthano, and the four-face out of 7th-
century Sri Ksetra. The temples, whose
main features were the pointed arches
and the vaulted chamber, became larger
and grander in the Pagan period.[102]

Innovations

Although the Burmese temple designs

evolved from Indic, Pyu (and possibly
Mon) styles, the techniques of vaulting
seem to have developed in Pagan itself.
The earliest vaulted temples in Pagan
date to the 11th century while the
vaulting did not become widespread in
India until the late 12th century. The
masonry of the buildings shows "an
astonishing degree of perfection", where
many of the immense structures survived
the 1975 earthquake more or less
intact.[100] (Unfortunately, the vaulting
techniques of the Pagan era were lost in
the later periods. Only much smaller gu
style temples were built after Pagan. In
the 18th century, for example, King
Bodawpaya attempted to build the
Mingun Pagoda, in the form of spacious
vaulted chambered temple but failed as
craftsmen and masons of the later era
had lost the knowledge of vaulting and
keystone arching to reproduce the
spacious interior space of the Pagan
hollow temples.[99])

Another architectural innovation

originated in Pagan is the Buddhist
temple with a pentagonal floor plan. This
design grew out of hybrid (between one-
face and four-face designs) designs. The
idea was to include the veneration of the
Maitreya Buddha, the future and fifth
Buddha of this era, in addition to the four
who had already appeared. The
Dhammayazika and the Ngamyethna
Pagoda are examples of the pentagonal
design.[100]
Legacy
The kingdom of Pagan, the "charter
polity"[103] of Myanmar, had a lasting
impact on Burmese history and the
history of mainland Southeast Asia. The
success and longevity of Pagan's
dominance over the Irrawaddy valley
enabled the ascent of Burmese language
and culture, and the spread of Bamar
ethnicity in Upper Myanmar and laid the
foundation for their continued spread
elsewhere in later centuries. The 250-
year rule left a proven system of
administrative and cultural norms that
would be adopted and extended by
successor kingdoms—not only by the
Burmese-speaking Ava Kingdom but also
by the Mon-speaking Hanthawaddy
Kingdom and Shan-speaking Shan
states.[104]

Continued cultural integration in an

otherwise politically fragmented post-
Pagan Myanmar set the stage for a
resurgence of a unified Burmese state in
the 16th century. An apt comparison can
be made with the Khmer Empire, the
other Southeast Asian Empire that
Mongol invasions toppled. Various Tai-
Shan peoples, who came down with the
Mongols, came to dominate the political
landscapes of the two former empires.
Whereas Myanmar would see a
resurgence, the post-Mongol Khmer state
was reduced to a mere shadow of her
former self, never to regain her
preeminence.[105] Only in the former
Khmer Empire, did the Thai/Lao ethnicity
and Thai/Lao languages spread
permanently at the expense of the Mon-
Khmer speaking peoples, not unlike the
Burman takeover of the Pyu realm four
centuries earlier.[106] In Myanmar, the
result was the opposite: the Shan
leadership, as well as lowland Shan
immigrants of Myinsaing, Pinya, Sagaing
and Ava Kingdoms came to adopt
Burmese cultural norms, the Burmese
language, and the Bamar
ethnicity.[107][108] The convergence of
cultural norms around existing Pagan-
centered norms, at least in the Irrawaddy
valley core, in turn facilitated the latter-
day political reunification drives of
Toungoo and Konbaung dynasties.

The Pagan Empire also changed the

history of mainland Southeast Asia.
Geopolitically, Pagan checked the Khmer
Empire's encroachment into the
Tenasserim coast and upper Menam
valley. Culturally, the emergence of Pagan
as a Theravada stronghold in the face of
an expanding Hindu Khmer Empire from
the 11th to 13th centuries provided the
Buddhist school, which had been in
retreat elsewhere in South Asia and
Southeast Asia, a much needed reprieve
and a safe shelter.[109] Not only did
Pagan help restart Theravada Buddhism
in Ceylon but the over two centuries of
patronage by a powerful empire made
Theravada Buddhism's later growth in
Lan Na (northern Thailand), Siam (central
Thailand), Lan Xang (Laos), and Khmer
Empire (Cambodia) in the 13th and 14th
centuries possible.[note 3]

See also
Burmese monarchs' family tree
Mrauk-U Kingdom
Shan states
Notes
1. (Harvey 1925: 326–327): The location of
Macchagiri is likely to the west of Thayet
on the western side of the Arakan Yoma;
Harvey's map of Pagan Empire on p. 21
shows present-day Kyaukpru District
(specifically, Ann) as Macchagiri.
2. (Yazawin Thit Vol. 1 2012: 148, footnote
8): Thursday, Full moon of Tabodwe 648
ME = 30 January 1287
3. (Ricklefs et al 2010: 45–48): The spread
of Theravada Buddhism in Siam, Lan Xang
and Cambodia was also aided by the
interaction with Ceylon. However, the
Ceylonese interaction was possible only
because the Theravada monk order was
restarted in 1071–1072 by the monks
 from Pagan per (Harvey 1925: 32–33) and
(Htin Aung 1967: 35).

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2. Lieberman 2003: 90–91, 94
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4. Lieberman 2003: 24
5. Lieberman 2003: 92–97
6. Lieberman 2003: 119–120
7. Htin Aung 1967: 63–65
8. Than Tun 1964: ix–x
9. Lieberman 2003: 196
10. Myint-U 2006: 44–45
11. Lieberman 2003: 91
12. Hmannan Vol. 1 2003: 188
13. Harvey 1925: 349
14. Cooler 2002: Chapter I: Prehistoric and
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15. Lieberman 2003: 89
16. Moore 2007: 236
17. Harvey 1925: 3
18. Hall 1960: 11
19. Coedès 1968: 105–106
20. Lieberman 2003: 90
21. Harvey 1925: 308
22. Myint-U 2006: 56–57
23. Aung-Thwin 1985: 205
24. Htin Aung 1967: 367
25. Aung-Thwin 2005: 185
26. Aung-Thwin 2005: 36–37
27. Aung-Thwin 2005: 38
28. Aung-Thwin 1985: 21
29. Griffiths, Arlo; Lepoutre, Amandine (2013).
"Campa Epigraphical Data on Polities and
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doi:10.1353/jbs.2013.0014 (https://doi.or
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40. Lieberman 2003: 92
41. Aung-Thwin 1985: 23–24
42. Wicks 1992: 130–131
43. Coedès 1968: 178, 183
44. Aung-Thwin 1985: 25–26
45. "KING ANAWRAHTA AND THE RISE AND
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Myanmar/sub5_5a/entry-2999.html) .
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47. Harvey 1925: 56
48. Aung-Thwin 1985: 26
49. Htin Aung 1967: 55
50. Harvey 1925: 62
51. Myint-U 2006: 60–62
52. Harvey 1925: 68
53. Hmannan Vol. 1 2003: 360
54. Htin Aung 1967: 83
55. Htin Aung 1967: 73–75
56. Than Tun 1959: 119–120
57. Than Tun 1959: 122
58. Coedès 1968: 210–211
59. Than Tun 1964: 137
60. Köllner, Bruns 1998: 115
61. Harvey 1925: 365
62. Aung-Thwin 1985: 196–197
63. Aung-Thwin 1985: 99–101
64. Lieberman 2003: 112–113
65. Aung-Thwin 1985: 104–105
66. Aung-Thwin 1985: 130–131
67. Htin Aung 1967: 45
68. Harvey 1925: 58
69. Harvey 1925: 323–324
70. Dijk 2006: 37–38
71. Lieberman 2003: 88–89
72. Aung-Thwin 1985: 93, 163
73. Harvey 1925: 333
74. Lieberman 2003: 100–101
75. Lieberman 2003: 95–97
76. Aung-Thwin 1985: 190
77. Lieberman 2003: 94–95
78. Htin Aung 1967: 57
79. Than Tun 1964: 182–183
80. Lieberman 2003: 118
81. Aung-Thwin 1985: 95–96
82. Aung-Thwin 1985: 71
83. Lieberman 2003: 114–115
84. Myint-U 2006: 72–73
85. Lieberman 2003: 130–131
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89. Lieberman 2003: 133–134
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92. Aung-Thwin 2005: 167–178, 197–200
93. Lieberman 2003: 115–116
94. Aung-Thwin 2005: 31–34
95. Htin Aung 1967: 15–17
96. Harvey 1925: 55–56
97. Lieberman 2003: 117–118
98. Aung-Thwin 2005: 26–31
99. Aung-Thwin 2005: 233–235
100. Köllner, Bruns 1998: 118–120
101. Aung-Thwin 2005: 210–213
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103. Lieberman 2003: 88
104. Lieberman 2003: 131–139
105. Htin Aung 1967: 82–83
106. Lieberman 2003: 122–123
107. Hall 1960: 30–31
108. Lieberman 2003: 188
109. Ricklefs et al 2010: 43–45

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