Bagan Burma

-Bagan, bordering to the east bank of the mighty Irrawaddy River,

once was the capital of the First Burma Empire. Bagan is now a 42 square kilometer area dotted with thousands of old and renovated  pagodas, stupas, shrines, ordination halls and monuments.

Bagan is one of the main archaeological sites in Southeast Asia with 2230 monuments still standing and some 1000 in ruins, there were originally about 4500, as many as 600 disappeared into the Irrawaddy during the summer monsoon flooding. Time, man and nature, particularly earthquakes (there is a major one every two hundred years), have taken their toll on Bagan but the most important monuments have been restored to their original grandeur and more are renovated from time to time.

Some of the best Burmese hotels are actually Bagan Hotels notably the Tharabar Gate Hotel, the Bagan Resort just beside the Bagan Golf Course, Thiripyitsaya Hotel and plenty of other. There are enough Bagan Budget Hotels to make you stay a pleasant one without spending to much for a hotel pr resort. On top of it are plenty of small family run hotels and guesthouses spread over the whole area its easy to find just the right Bagan hotel which fits you.

If you arrive at Bagan you need to pay a fee at the airport, if you are a individual traveler have a look around at the arrival hall, there are always several tourist guides around for hire, its almost mandatory that you hire one of them at least for 2 days otherwise you really get lost and will miss the real great spots since  its a large area and there is no Bagan City.  

Ancient Bagan is spread out over a large area, horse carts and bicycles are the main means of transports, of course you can hire a private car, there are no taxis and the public transport are pic up trucks which are very cheap to use but give a very rough ride. Pagoda, temple and other Bagan photos are probably some of the best souvenirs you can bring home. A other transportation are the boats and small ships on the Irrawaddy, since Bagan

Bagan Photos

Balloons over Bagan

is bordering to the east bank of the river. At least one ride on  the mighty Irrawaddy should be made on your stay, it real exciting to glide along the murky water and see the pagodas and temples from the waterside. A unique idea on Bagan travel is use the Balloons over Bagan and enjoy the sight from the slowly drifting balloons, its quite expensive but its somehow worth worth it. Bagan flights are to Rangoon, Mandalay and Heho (Taungyi) flying time is an hour or less, several airlines do the Bagan flights every day.

Among them is Bagan Air, Yangon Air and Air Mandalay. Bagan can also be reached by road from  Rangoon, a distance of around 683 kilometers. Buses make the trip in about 16 hours or an adventurous traveler can reduce the time by 2 hours by taking a car —provided the traveler can take the stress and strain of travel on Burma roads. All has the same purpose see a Bagan Pagoda and there are plenty of them. From Mandalay and Taunggyi, distances of around 320 kilometers in both cases, travel by road to Bagan takes approximately 8 hours. One can also reach Bagan by boat, a 2 week journey from Rangoon. From Mandalay the 12-14 hour cruise down the Irrawaddy to Bagan is very pleasant and rewarding. It is possible to get to Bagan from all 3 places by a combination of rail and road travel but it can be time consuming and complicated. Bagan Videos are here. -Ancient Bagan with over 2 thousand religious monuments, still stands as a unforgettable sight, depicting the greatness of human endeavors and aspirations. In Bagan around 2000 temples and stupas are spread over about four square miles bordering the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy river in the dry zone of Central Burma. The area is very dry, dominated by the pagodas and temples and "toddy palms" in between. The surface is sand and most roads have no asphalt surface, its simple dirt roads with ox cart tracks at the side. Because of this the best travel time for Bagan is after the monsoon rains when the the greenery, trees etc. are still fresh from the water they received this is around October to December, after it gets real dry. All this is real strange since there is plenty of water in the Irrawaddy River, it only needs some pumps and irrigation to make Bagan a tropical garden, but the political situation has frozen every activity since decades. The only activities are to build Bagan Hotels and renovate some of the pagodas and temples plus the Buddha statues inside the monuments.   Bagan had been the capital of Burma for two and a half centuries (1044-1286 A.D.) when the Burma empire, so to speak, reached the zenith of its power for the first time. Actually the founding of Bagan city (a group of 19 villages) took place quite early in the dim past (about 107 A.D.), but the illustrious dynasty of temple-builders, which made Bagan strong and famous, started only in 1044 A.D. (i.e. 22 years before the Battle of Hastings in Britain). King Anawrahta (42 nd. of the whole dynasty of 55 kings) headed the temple-building era and in 242 years (1044 to 1286 A.D.) the zealous kings and people built, it is said, over four million pagodas, big and small ! Thus the Great wheel of Buddha’s Dhamma had been brought to Burma by  missionaries since Asoka’s time. The wheel was then set up and ready, but it

Bagan Pagoda Bagan Pagoda Bagan Pagoda Buddha Statues

Pagodas of Bagan

needed a strong person like King Anawrahta of Bagan to start turning the wheel in motion. Bagan surely owes a great deal to the Mon of Thaton and Pyus of Tharekhittaya, actually they are the source of Bagan. A very similar style and building method of the pagodas of Bagan and the temples  can be found in Cambodia. -Bagan History The history of Bagan can be told in two parts, Bagan before King Anawrahta and after. As Rome, or any other city, wasn’t built in a day and for Bagan to come into being, it had taken a long time to receive the tradition and influence of three former dynasties — Tagaung, Thaton and Tharekhittaya. At the start (107 A.D.) Bagan at Yone-hlut kyun might just have been a strong

Pagodas and Ox Cart Irrawaddy at Bagan Bagan Pagodas

fortress or garrison town. The founder, King Thamodarit, paid tribute to his Pyu descent by giving his fortress city the name Paukkan or Pyu Gama (which simply means a Pyu Village.) In everyday usage, the name changed to Bagan and pagodas started to pop up. Since the Irrawaddy at Bagan functions as a transport hub for building materials. How beautiful this buildings are you can see at the Gubyaukgyi Pagoda Window at the right Bagan picture. Burma cities usually have  at least two names, formal and informal. (Shwebo the capital of the last Konbaung Period had five names.) So, in formal Bagan was described as Arimaddana Pura, that translates into “City of Conquerors” and as the name suggested, the first group of kings had quite a hard time to get the wild environment under control.

Bagan Gubyaukgyi Pagoda Window Irrawaddy River Bagan Burma

Bagan history tells  that from the dense forests nearby, wild beasts gave some problems to Bagan people. Wild vegetation of ground bushes overran the paddy fields of the countryside. Rulers such as Pyu Saw Hti (the third king) has done plenty of fighting to get rid of the wild ones. Thus, Hnget-pyit-taung pagoda stand today in memory of those early struggles. Due to nature the palace sites of the kings had to change four times, though all were in the same vicinity. The present site of Bagan, with city walls pagoda, temples and Bagan Monasteries plus Tharaba Gate was the fourth city built during the reign of King Pyinbyu in 849 A.D. He was the 34th. king of the dynasty and Bagan at that time had started to prosper having commercial relations with Shans and Chinese in the east, Assam and Manipur in the west and the land of Pyus and Mons in

Dhammayangyi Temple Bagan Burma Monastery Bagan Women fetching water Oxcart and Pagodas Thatbyinnyu Temple Bagan Monastery

southern Burma.

As regards religion, people of early Bagan, with some Pyus and other natives of the north mixed up, had diverse interests. Horse-riding Aris (monks) with pugilistic habits and other malpractices had migrated from N.W. India and they gained considerable sway over common people. Then during the reign of Thin-lÈ-kyaung (344-384 A.D.), the 7th. king of the dynasty, Mahagiri Nats came to Mt. Popa (also page 57) and nat-worshipping was popular among all classes. Thus Bagan before Anawrahta, for nearly a thousand years (107-1044 A.D.), still had no cultural progress, though its position as a kingdom could be considered to have been established.

-The Kingdom of Bagan under Anawrahta

(1044-1298 A.D.)
Anawrahta was the 42nd. king of Bagan dynasty and he came to the throne in 1044 A.D. He opened the stage of his pegency dramatically by fighting and killing his half-brother King SokkatÈ in single combat. He was hot-tempered and did many wrongs as a young king. But at heart, he was just and straight-forward, and he tried to repair his wrongs.

Bagan old Palace

Bagan old Temple

Anawrahta did many works of public utility, such as repairing Meiktila lake and construcing irrigations, thus KyauksÈ became the granary of northern Burma. He made administrative reforms, dividing the kingdom into districts and appointing officers to look after all affairs and to collect fair revenue. For security, he established 45 out-posts along the border of

Bagan the King Bagan the king listen to the public

his kingdom. In religion and culture, Anawrahta did not encourage the shabby customs of Aris, nor the popular celebrations of nat-pwe's. He looked for a true faith and, in 1056 A.D., Shin Arahan, known to be Arhat missionary, came from Thaton to Bagan. The dedicated Buddhist monk and the dynamic king met to make the historic change in Bagan and later to all Burma. Anawrahta became a pure Theravada Buddhist with great zeal. First of all he abolished the Ari gangs, driving some away and forcing most of them to work as lay men. Then to foster the true religion, he needed Buddhist scriptures. Because King Manuha of Thaton bluntly refused his decent request, Anawrahta made war on Thaton (1057 A.D.) and thus destroyed the Mon dynasty. Thirty-one elephant loads of the scriptures were carried away to Bagan. Manuha and his family were taken prisoners. A very important thing was that Mon crafts≠men, artistes and skilled workers numbering about 30,000 were also brought to Bagan. Anyway, destiny seemed to have sacrificed Thaton for the coming greatness of Bagan and also for the emergence of Burma as a leading Buddhist country today. Shin Arahan, the scriptures, Mon craftsmen and Anawrahta, with his people together started building the glorious Bagan. Bagan people, during Anawrahta’s reign and after, became so well-

versed in the scriptures that, it is said, even village girls could discuss metaphysics with the learned monks from great monasteries. Then there appeared exceptionally educated people among the leisurely royal class — King Kyaswa, Princess Thanbyin, etc. —who held regular classes teaching monks in Pali and Sanskrit texts !

-The Ananda Temple at Bagan

This temple symbolizes the endless wisdom (Ananta Panna) of the Buddha just as the Thatbyinnyu temple symbolizes the omniscience of the Tathagata. Hence the name Ananta, which changed later to Ananda, the name of Buddha’s cousin. Bagan Ananda Temple It is in plan a square of nearly 200 feet to the side and broken on each side by the projection of large gabled vestibules, which convert the plan into a perfect Greek cross. These vestibules are somewhat lower than the main mass of the building, which elevates itself to a height of 35 feet (about 10 m) in two tiers of windows Above this rise successively diminishing terraces, the last of which just affording breadth for the spire which crowns and completes the edifice. The lower half of this spire is in the form of a mitre-like pyramid adapted from the temples of India; the upper half is the same molded taper pinnacle that terminates the common bell-shaped pagodas of Bagan. The gilded htee (umbrella) caps the whole at a height of 168 feet above the ground. The interior consists of two vaulted and high but narrow corridors running parallel to each other along the four sides of the temple. They are connected by low and narrow passages in front of the window by which light is admitted and further intersected by four large corridors into which access is obtained through the porticoes. In the center is an enormous cube, on the four sides of which are deep and high niches enshrining four colossal standing Buddhas of the present world who have appeared and entered Nirvana. The images are represented in the following order: north—Kakusanda; east—Konagamana; south— Kassapa; and west— Gotama. Each of them is 31 feet high above the throne, which itself is nearly 8 feet in height. Of these images only those on the north and south are the original ones contemporary with the foundation of the temple ; those on the east and west were put up later to replace the original images which were destroyed by fire. More Interesting features of the temple are the numerous glazed terracotta tiles (left page top) ornamenting the base and the receding terraces which represent the Jataka stories and the hosts of Mara’s army. Each of these plaques is inscribed with a Mon legend. The interior walls are honey-combed with niches in which are set small stone Buddhas in various postures. The most notable among the sculptures is a series of eighty relief’s in the two lower tiers of niches in the outer corridor, illustrating the life of the Bodhisattva from his birth to the attainment of supreme wisdom. The western sanctum also enshrines the life-size statues of its founder, Kyanzittha and the primate, Shin Arahan. In the porch on the west face there are two Buddha-pads (Buddha’s footprints) placed on a pedestal. Each footprint bears the traditional 108 marks as enumerated in some of the Pali commentaries, but owing to the gilding and wearing away due to constant washing, some of these marks have disappeared and cannot be properly identified. Close to the Ananda Temple is the local museum containing exhibits illustrating the iconography. architecture and religious history of Pagan. Along the verandahs of the museum are inscribed stones collected from the vicinity. They record religious endowments of the Pagan period in different languages. Burmese, Mon, Pyu, Tamil, Siamese and Chinese.

Thus Bagan of today, with the remaining two thousand temples and pagodas, though grand and splendid in old age, is just a skeleton of the great glorious past.

On certain places like Bagan, Mandalay, Rangoon etc. it might be useful to hire a local photographer to assist you in finding the right places for photo - pictures at the right time.

The reason is very very simple the local photographer know all the good photo shooting places, that includes naturally also video. They show you places to make your super photo you would never have found, especially when you don't have more than maybe a couple of days in a particular for doing your Burma photo. If you are on a longer photo - video trip you can hire a Burma photographer to come with you just like you hire the tourist guide, its worth it, doesn't cost lot of money and makes sure you will find the REAL places. If you look for a photo guide in Rangoon, Mr. Ko Oo is a excellent choice, you can reach him through the e-mail of this site, click contact above..

All other places have their own local photographer ask at the hotel or us.

We also have a pool of writer available who can do a excellent text on almost any subject, but ... no politics !
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