life derived from the Indian subcontinent. This had el-
ements of Sanskritic and Pali Buddhism. In addition,
various Hindu images have been found indicating that
Pyu religious life incorporated a number of cults and
movements. The workmanship of these images, par-
ticularly the gold work on the reliquary casket found
at the Khin Ba mound, is exquisite and bears testimony
to the accounts of the Chinese chroniclers. The prin-
cipal Buddhist monuments found at S ́rKsetra, large
stupas like the Be-be-gyi, are said to derive from colos-
sal Sri Lankan prototypes; cave temples, such as the
Lei-myet-hna, were made of brick and are precursory
to the monuments found at Pagan. They share similar
structural systems, incorporating the pointed arch and
voussoir brick patterns.
Along the southern Burma coastline the Mon civi-
lization enjoyed good maritime contacts with India
and acted as a conduit for the ingress of Buddhism into
the Irrawaddy valley. Iconographic finds at Thaton and
the other Mon sites indicate a mixed religious life de-
rived from the subcontinent. Portable votive plaques
made of terra-cotta illustrate principal scenes from the
life of the Buddha; relief stone sculptures are in the
Mon-Dvaravatstyle, which is also found in southern
Thailand. Bronzes and other portable images brought
from the subcontinent also have been found. There are
no surviving temples or original stupas from this pe-
riod. The Mon possessed their own script, and their
knowledge of Pali texts was significant to the develop-
ment of art at Pagan.
Pagan, 1000–1300 C.E.
The Pyu city of S ́rKsetra fell to a Chinese raid in 832
C.E., after which a new state emerged to dominate the
middle part of the Irrawaddy valley at Pagan. Early Pa-
gan STUPAs, such as the Nga-kywe-na-daung, or tem-
ples, such as the Alo-pyi, are of Pyu origin. By the
eleventh century C.E., Pagan under King Anawartha
came to dominate much of the valley and annexed the
Mon kingdom of Thaton. As a consequence, both Mon
and Pali texts appeared for the first time at Pagan.
These provided the basis for cycles of religious paint-
ings and sculpture. Inside temples, THERAVADAtexts,
tales of the life of the Buddha, and JATAKAstories were
depicted. Along the terraces of stupas, terra-cotta
plaques, usually glazed, illustrated jatakastories. As
with the Pyu cities, religious life at Pagan appears to
have been mixed, even eclectic, with Theravada, MA-
HAYANA, and Brahmanic elements coexisiting. It is sig-
nificant that Pagan’s rise coincided with the decline of
Buddhism in India and elsewhere. The wealth and pa-
tronage of Pagan kings attracted both scholars and
artists to court, whether from the MAHAYANAworld of
Pala Bengal or the Theravada heartland of Sri Lanka.
By the beginning of the twelfth century the Pagan kings
had firmly embraced Theravada, and epigraphy de-
scribes the “purification” of the country’s religious life.
Theravada notions of KINGSHIPstyled the Pagan kings
as dhammarajaand khammaraja—protectors of Bud-
dhism granting them legitimacy in their imperial mis-
sion to unite all Burma. Pagan kings in turn promoted
the faith through the lavish and profuse construction
of monuments.
According to the United Nations Educational, Sci-
entific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) survey
completed in 2000 there are 2,217 standing monuments
at Pagan; in addition there are numerous mounds in-
dicating collapsed monuments. An earlier survey by an
eighteenth-century king had listed over 4,000 monu-
ments. The palace-city was walled and moated and
covered a relatively small corner of the twenty-five-
square-mile site. The principal architectural forms are
the stupa and the temple, with a number of hybrid
forms integrating both these types. Monastery com-
plexes, library structures, and ordination halls are to
be found, either as part of, or independent of, larger
temple complexes. Nearly all of these monuments were
constructed with brick. Monuments were endowed,
whether by the king and royal family or by courtier
families, with considerable grants of glebe land and
“pagoda slaves” for the maintenance of these founda-
tions into posterity. The greater dedications were col-
legiate centers of study and scholarship. Most of the
wooden monasteries, which, along with the palaces
and domestic buildings, were made from perishable
materials, have been lost. It may be that the decline of
Pagan in the late thirteenth century was the result of
the strain of having much of the national economy
dedicated to the service of these monuments and their
incumbents. Considerable information on the extent
and costs of such dedications is contained in contem-
porary epigraphy.
Burmese Buddhism, from Pagan times to the pre-
sent, has been described as kammatic,the main pre-
occupation, from the king to humblest subject, being
the earning of merit to ensure a favorable REBIRTHin
the next existence. Coupled to this, the royal dedica-
tion of colossal monuments was seen as an act of com-
munal merit-earning that would benefit the entire
nation. (This thinking has remained current with suc-
cessive postindependence military regimes, who, like
the kings of Pagan, dedicate a large part of the na-MYANMAR, BUDDHISTART IN