92JOURNEYSangon’s beating heart is
the Shwedagon Pagoda,
the holiest temple in all
Myanmar (Burma), one of
the most fervently Buddhist countries in
the world. While new buildings zoom
up in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the
Shwedagon’s golden zedi (stupa), some
100 metres high, remains visible from
many of the city’s 33 neighbourhoods.
The Shwedagon is one of the liveliest
places in Yangon, busy from before dawn
till late at night. People come to pray, to
promenade around the base, or just to sit
and talk in its shadow. Legend has it that
the Shwedagon is over 2,500 years old,
and houses hairs of the Buddha brought
to Myanmar from India; more likely
it was established initially as a Hindu
shrine by Indian traders who began ar-
riving in what was then a fishing village
from the fifth or sixth century AD.
Nothing is certain in Yangon’s
early history. Despite being Myanmar’s
capital until 2006 – when administrative
functions were moved to the newly built
Naypyidaw – and despite still being the
country’s largest city, the earliest known
written accounts of the settlement date
from the 15th century. At that time it
was known as Dagon and was little morethan a collection of wooden monasteries
and homes surrounding the Shweda-
gon, which had long since shaken off its
probable Hindu origins and was already
a famed Buddhist pilgrimage site.
Another settlement of houses sat a
couple of miles south of the Shwedagon
in what is now downtown, alongside
the river that connected Dagon to the
Ayeyarwady delta and the Andaman Sea
beyond it. It was this tiny town that the
then Burmese king Alaungpaya renamed
Yangon (‘End of Strife’) in 1755 to cele-
brate his victory over a rival kingdom.
Almost a century later, in 1852, Rear
Admiral Charles Austen (brother of nov-
elist Jane) used the Shwedagon to guide
a fleet of invading ships up the Yangon
river. The British changed the settle-
ment’s name to Rangoon and, by 1886,
the country’s abundant natural resources
were in British hands. As Indian and
Chinese immigrants arrived, Rangoon
was transformed into one of Asia’s
first truly global cities, a multicultural
trading hub that rivalled Calcutta (now
Kolkata), Shanghai and Singapore.
Rangoon reached its colonial apothe-
osis in the 1920s, when its port was
the second busiest in the world. By then
the British had remade the city, creatingY
David Eimer roams
the colonial core and
glittering Buddhist
shrines of the
former capital of
Myanmar (Burma)
City of
golden
pagodas
Global City Yangon Myanmar
ALAMYThe magnificent gilded
Shwedagon Pagoda,
claimed to be 2,500 years
old, dominates central
Yangon, Myanmar’s
largest cityDavid Eimer
is an author and former
foreign correspondent.
His latest book is
A Savage Dreamland:
Journeys in Burma
(Bloomsbury, 2019)ИЗП
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