Bagan (ပုဂံ)
- Maximus Nostramabus
- Nov 5, 2020
- 9 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Ancient town with 2,000 temples, pagodas and stupas - Bagan 1588
What and Why
Bagan (Burmese: ပုဂံ) is famous for the being the land of thousand temples, and the famous picture of all these temples seemingly floating in a reddish haze can be taken easily, as above. All one needs to do is to go atop one of these temples at idawn, or sometimes dusk and with a simple digital camera or smartphone, voilà!
These temples were mostly built during the area's heydays from the 9th to 12 century when it was the capital of the Pagan Kingdom (ပုဂံခေတ်), where the city name followed till today. 4,466 temples, stupas and pagodas are on record and now more than 2,200 survive after so many years, including a major earthquake. At its height, scholars estimate there may have been more than 10,000 religious monuments and building structures. These temples, mostly Buddhist, but including Hindu, Jain become important cultural heritage, transpiring religion, language and culture over the years.
Toponymy
Bagan is the present-day standard Burmese pronunciation of the Burmese word 'ပုဂံ (pugan)', derived from Old Burmese 'ပုကမ် (pukam)'. The word is theorised to derive from the two words 'ပျူ (pyu)' + 'ဂါမ (gama)'. Pyu (ပျူ) is the former group of city-states that existed from 2nd century BCE to mid-11th century CE around the region, with the word 'ပျူ (pyu)' meaning 'country' and 'ဂါမ (gama)' meaning 'village' respectively in Old Burmese.
See
There are over 2,000 pagodas and temples in a very small area and there is no way that one will visit every one of them. To be frank and fair, nobody can be expected to visit more than a dozen of of them, let alone all 2,000, as it will get bland after a while, unless one is an archaeologist...
Bagan was the capital of the Pagan, the first polity to unify much of present-day Myanmar (ရးနိဂီုဗၟာ). The kingdom reached its zenith under Anawrahta Minsaw (အနော်ရထာ မင်းစော), who established Theravada Buddhism as the dominant religious tradition of the region. Royal patronage and elite competition drove an extraordinary wave of temple construction, with objectives like political legitimacy, status, authority other than only faith and superstition.
In spite of the large numbers of temples, they are not arranged randomly nor are they arranged as one single dense temple complex. Instead monuments are scattered across an area of approximately 40 km², after all they were built through a fairly long time under different objectives, but they do reflect that they were aligning along a few main axes, which coincidentally became the present main trunk roads. This is attributed to urban planning which aligned with a hydraulic irrigation system, with suggestions of possible alignments with cosmology. However due to the earthquakes and poor preservation, these alignments not no longer observable.
Before we start perhaps we should distinguish the three main types of structures, although all these structures are generically called paya (ဘုရား) in Bagan:
Stupa (စေတီ, hcay te): The stupa starts with an 'egg (Pali: anda)‘ structure and tapers to a small tip at the top with a little ceremonial umbrella. Usually the stupa is hollow and contains a relic. The stupa is a representation of the Buddhist cosmos (Sanskrit: त्रिसहस्र महासहस्र लोकधातु, tri-sahasra mahā-sahasra lokadhātu) with its shape symbolising Mount Meru (Sanskrit: मेरु). The original word comes from Sanskrit 'stūpa (Sanskrit: स्तूप)' means 'heap'.
Pagoda (ဘုရား, paya): A Burmese pagoda is a stupa standing on top of a massive base, usually round or squarish in shape. Compared to a stupa, it is generally taller and slimmer in shape.
Temple (ဘုရားကျောင်း, bhurarrkyaungg): In contrast to the stupa or pagoda, a temple is generally hollow and squarish in shape and is used for meditation. There is no conspicuous tall structure.
We follow the main road. Many of these temples had been destroyed during the 1975 Bagan earthquake and was subsequently reconstructed.
Shwezigon Paya (ရွှေစည်းခုံဘုရား)
A very spectacular golden pagoda which shines when the sun shines onto it, Shwezigon Paya (ရွှေစည်းခုံဘုရား) is built during the 11th century when the Pagan Kingdom just began. The pagoda is said to have enshrined the bone and tooth of Gautama Buddha (Pali: Siddhartha Gotama). The name means 'golden pagoda in a dune'.
Shwezigon Paya is one of the most important and influential Buddhist monuments in Myanmar. Built in the late 11th century, the construction mraarked the decisive moment in the consolidation of Theravāda Buddhism as the state religion of the Pagan Kingdom, and now it is a major pilgrimage site,
Htilominlo Temple (ထီးလိုမင်းလိုဘုရား)
Htilominlo Temple (ထီးလိုမင်းလိုဘုရား) is a temple with very elaborate facade decoration. Hti (ထီး), pronounced /tʰí/, is the little ornamental umbrella on top of the stupa. The umbrella, known as chatra (Sanskrit: छत्र) is an auspicious symbol in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.
Ananda Temple (အာနန္ဒာ ဘုရား)
Probably the most renowned temple in Bagan, Ananda Temple (အာနန္ဒာ ဘုရား) is a Buddhist temple built in early 12th century. The temple is widely regarded as the finest and most architecturally sophisticated monument in Bagan. It represents a high point in early Burmese temple design and Theravāda Buddhist statecraft. It is often said that Ananda refined the monumental temple form around the region.
The very elaborate Buddhist temple houses four standing Buddhas, each one facing the four cardinal directions of East, North, West and South. They represent the four past Buddhas:
Buddha himself.
The temple is considered an architectural wonder with its fusion style of the then Mon (မွန် ပြည်နယ်) and Indian architecture. Ānanda (Sanskrit: आनंद) is Buddha's cousin and wrote most of Buddha's teaching and compiled them into proper texts.
Bagan Golden Palace (ပုဂံရွှေနန်းတော်)
A very good and sparky-looking palace which is actually the archaeological musuem. However we have been advised that the museum was a rip-off and uninformative.
Thatbyinnyu Temple (သဗ္ဗညု ဘုရား)
The Thatbyinnyu Temple (သဗ္ဗညု ဘုရား) is the tallest structure in Bagan and is another prime example of innovative temple architecture. The name comes from the word ’shabbannu' in Pali meaning 'the omniscient'. Since the temple stands tall, it is easily visible from every direction and is one of the most photographed, especially those hazy picture. The main picture above shows Thatbyinnyu Temple in the background, with Ananda in the foreground.
Bupaya (ဗူးဘုရား)
Bupaya (ဗူးဘုရား) is a small but noticeable stupa which sits on the bank of Ayeyarwady River (ဧရာဝတီမြစ်), formerly known as the Irrawaddy. This golden bulbous stupa was built during the 2nd century, and the stem '-bu (ဗူး)' means 'gourd'.
Shwesandaw Pagoda (ရွှေဆံတော် ဘုရား)
The most visited temple as this one stands the tallest, Shwesandaw Pagoda (ရွှေဆံတော် ဘုရား) houses the relic of Buddha's hair. As a matter of fact, the word 'Shwesandaw (ရွှေဆံတော်)' means 'golden sacred hair'.
Shwesandaw Pagoda is one of the most prominent and visually striking stupas in Bagan. Built in 1057 by King Anawrahta, it commemorated the king’s conquest of the Mon kingdom and the acquisition of sacred Buddhist relics, specifically the hair relics of the Buddha.
Shwesandaw is architecturally significant because of its five receding terraces, which rise in a stepped, pyramidal formation supporting a cylindrical stupa topped by a gilded hti. The pyramidal geometry reflects a cosmological symbolism linked to Mount Meru, the sacred mountain at the centre of Buddhist cosmology.
As the temple is situated in the southern part of the Bagan archaeological zone, its height and tiered design historically made it one of the best vantage points for viewing the surrounding temple plain and all the surrounding temples. As a result it became a fan-favourite for sunrise and sunset viewing.
Our main hazy picture is taken atop of Shwesandaw Pagoda.
Mahabodhi Temple (မဟာဗောဓိ ကျောင်း)
The smaller replica of the Mahabodhi Mahavihar (Hindi: महाबोधि विहार), blogged earlier in Bōdh Gayā (बोधगया) is built in the 13th century.
Dhammayangyi Temple (ဓမ္မရံကြီးဘုရား)
Dhammayangyi Temple (ဓမ္မရံကြီးဘုရား) is the most massive temple with a very wide base. Again it is very popular for climbing.
Manuha Temple (မနူဟာဘုရား)
Manuha Temple (မနူဟာဘုရား) is a temple built by King Manuha (မကုဋ) during the mid-11th century.
Myazedi inscription (မြစေတီ ကျောက်စာ)
The Burmese version of the Rosetta stone, Myazedi inscription (မြစေတီ ကျောက်စာ) is an inscription that tells the story of Prince Yazakumar (ရာဇကုမာရ်) and King Kyansittha (ကျန်စစ်သား), in four languages: Burmese, Pyu, Mon, and Pali. The stone was engraved in the year 1113 and provided important knowledge about the four languages. 'Myazedi (မြစေတီ)' means 'emerald stupa' in Burmese.
Experience, Buy and Do
Bagan offers a lot of hand-made ceramics, paintings and lacquerware around the pagodas and temples. There needs a lot of haggling and bargaining with the hawkers though. After all tourism is the main income source for Bagan.
Eat and Drink
Burmese cuisine (မြန်မာ့အစားအစာ)
Inland Burmese cuisine (မြန်မာ့အစားအစာ) eats generally pork or poultry and they are usually prepared in a stew or curry to go with rice. The key ingredient to the curry or stew is ngapi (ငါးပ), a paste made from salted, fermented fish or shrimp, and is considered the cornerstone of Burmese traditional meal. Ngapi is almost used in every dish, soup, main, and fried rice. A full meal serving usually also comes with lots of condiments, which is considered the other essence of their food. Common condiments are pickled mango, anchovies, ngapi floss and preserved vegetables.
In Bagan, there are a number of good restaurants but most of them look rather primitive. Traditionally, Burmese eat their meals from dishes on a low small rattan table while sitting on a bamboo mat. Burmese eat with their hands. Our dinner was served in Golden Myanmar (ရွှေမြန်မာ).
I have to say the food is very good and filling, and I would have no reservation eating it again. The restaurants in Bagan are expectedly all very primitive though.
Paan (ကွမ်းယာ)
I have blogged about the chewing of paan (ကွမ်းယာ, kwun-ya) in my earlier blog on Aurangabad (औरंगाबाद). Myanmar has a long tradition of chewing paan, man and woman, and can be quite an eyesore due to the post-chew-spittoons. Most Burmese that we have encountered display betel-stained or corroded teeth, and it is reported that many Burmese have also developed oral cancer as a result.
Stay
We stayed in the Myanmar Han Hotel (မြန်မာ ဟန်ဟိုတယ်), which is very posh but affordable. Great design and good amenities at a budget price. Moreover it is just a short complimentary car ride from the train station.
Travel Suggestions and Logistics
As I mentioned in the main page sometimes it is the journey that counts. The interesting part of our journey is to travel from Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) to Bagan, which is a bloody unnecessary 16-hour train journey, although there were a lot of countryside sceneries to see. The train looked like a vehicle about to collapse and train-wreck anytime, by listening to its squeaky noise throughout the night...
As a matter of fact, there were sleeping cabins available but we missed it, and honestly we missed nothing as the condition inside these cabins were naturally terrible. We booked the entire bench for ourselves to sleep throughout the night, which cost only MMK 12,000K and unsurprisingly the whole bench collapsed during the night after a full night of rock-and-roll.
When I woke up the next morning, I discovered that I was sleeping with two other women and two babies next to me...
The best way to travel and go from ne temple to another in Bagan is to rent either a bicycle, or a motorcycle (if you have the licence), or if you can afford, charter a small car. Either way it is very affordable. From wherever you stay, there will be a stupa near you.
UNESCO Inscription
Lying on a bend of the Ayeyarwady River in the central plain of Myanmar, Bagan is a sacred landscape, featuring an exceptional range of Buddhist art and architecture. The seven components of the serial property include numerous temples, stupas, monasteries and places of pilgrimage, as well as archaeological remains, frescoes and sculptures. The property bears spectacular testimony to the peak of Bagan civilization (11th -13th centuries CE), when the site was the capital of a regional empire. This ensemble of monumental architecture reflects the strength of religious devotion of an early Buddhist empire.
References
Comments
Please share your thoughts and comments about the blog. If you need suggestions to build a travel itinerary, please let me know. More than willing to help. I would also like to build a bespoke-in-depth travel community around UNESCO WHS and ICH.
Comments