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Fall of Civilizations Podcast
16. Bagan - City Of Temples
02:07:06
In the lowlands of Burma lie the remains of thous…
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- [00:15]
Paul Cooper
Towards the end of the 13th century, around the year 1293, the Venetian explorer and adventurer Marco Polo was traveling through Southeast Asia, in the region of what is today Myanmar or Burma. Marco Polo had spent much of the last 20 years travelling around the Asian continent in a remarkable series of journeys along the ancient route known as the Silk Road. And recently, he had come into the employment of the Mongol Emperor of China, a man named Kublai Khan. Impressed by this foreign visitor, the emperor had appointed Marco Polo an ambassador, and he was now traveling through the forested mountains of southwestern China that now stand on the border of Myanmar. He passed through these jungle hills thick with bamboo forests and shaded groves, and then down into a wide river valley full of wild animals.
- [01:19]
Marco Polo
Leaving the province of K? Padandan, you enter a vast descent which you travel without variation for two days and a half, in the course of which no habitations are to be found. You then reach a spacious plain. Beyond this, in a southerly direction towards the confines of India, lies the city of Meen. The journey occupies 15 days through a country much depopulated and forests abounding with elephants, rhinoceroses and other wild beasts, where there is not the appearance of any habitation. In this country were found many elephants, large and handsome, wild oxen with stags, fallow deer and other animals in great abundance.
- [02:11]
Paul Cooper
But finally, after more than two weeks, Marco Polo came across a large city. And it was a city that, despite all he'd seen on his travels, still stood out to him for its size and magnificence. A city where more than 4,000 golden temples sent their spires lancing up into the afternoon air over the flat pan of the river valley.
- [02:38]
Marco Polo
After the journey of 15 days that has been mentioned, you reach the city of Milen, which is large, magnificent and the capital of the kingdom. The inhabitants are idolaters and have a language peculiar to themselves. It is related that there formerly reigned in this country a rich and powerful monarch.
- [03:04]
Paul Cooper
The city that Marco Polo called Mien had fallen on hard times. Everywhere homes were abandoned and temples had fallen into disuse and disrepair. There would have been the signs of war, hungry and displaced people on the streets. But over these sorry sights, the golden shrines of the city towered and attested to its former magnificence. And of all of these, two enormous temples stood out in particular.
- [03:36]
Marco Polo
When his death was drawing near, the king gave orders for erecting on the place of his interment at the head and foot of the sepulchre, two pyramidal towers entirely of marble, 10 paces in height of a proportionate bulk, and each terminating with a ball. One of these pyramids was covered with a plate of gold an inch in thickness, so that nothing besides the gold was visible, and the other with a plate of silver of the same thickness. Around the balls were suspended small bells of gold and of silver, which sounded when put in motion by the wind. The whole formed a splendid object.
- [04:27]
Paul Cooper
Years later, he would return to Italy and fall on the wrong side of a war between the city states of Genoa and Venice, and he would be thrown in prison by the Genoese. He would share his jail cell with a writer named Rustichello da Pisa, who was greatly impressed with Polo's tales of his travels. While waiting in prison for the war to end, the pair of them worked to clarify Polo's memories and write them down in vivid detail with what many scholars consider to be a surprisingly high degree of accuracy and authenticity. Together with the writer Rustichello, Marco Polo would become the first outsider to write a description of a city at the heart of an empire that today we know by the name Bagan. For centuries, it had united the lands of Myanmar and presided over a boom in art and architecture, constructing one of the most striking collections of religious buildings that the world has ever seen. The empire of Bagan had flourished and survived, and then, in a flash, its golden age had ended. Its people had left, and its grand temples had fallen slowly into ruin. My name's Paul Cooper, and you're listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast. Each episode, I look at a civilization of the past that rose to glory and then collapsed into the ashes of history. I want to ask, what did they have in common? What led to their fall? And what did it feel like to be a person alive at the time who witnessed the end of their world? In this episode, I want to tell one of the most colorful stories of civilizational survival, the story of the Bagan Empire of medieval Myanmar. I want to show how this kingdom rose up in the Irrawaddy river valley of central Myanmar and built one of the most remarkable series of monuments to have survived anywhere in the world. I want to show what life was like for the people who lived there and what happened to cause its sudden and complete collapse. The modern country of Myanmar is today the largest nation by continuous landmass in Southeast Asia. It's the size of Texas and nearly three times larger than the United Kingdom. Myanmar borders India in the west and China in the east. And its lands stretch between the mountain ranges the the Arakan, the Pegu, the Qin, and the Shan Yoma. Between the Bony peaks of these mountain ranges that run like a series of spines, north to south, down the whole country flow the rivers Qinduin, Xueli, Namai and Mali. Many of these rivers begin in the Himalayan glaciers of Upper Burma. And all of them flow down through the gorges of the high mountains and join the largest watercourse of all in a wide and sinuous flow. This is the great River Irrawaddy. The name of the Irrawaddy river derives from the Sanskrit name Iravati, a legendary white elephant with four tusks and seven trunks, who in Hindu mythology is the trusted mount of the God Indra. And it's not hard to see why the river deserves this grand and mythical name. The Irrawaddy river winds for more than 2,000 km across the dry zone of Burma, through palm forests and scrublands, and around sandy islands. The river is also one of Asia's widest, and at points during the rainy season, it can swell to nearly a kilometer across. These floods can be so dramatic that for millennia, the the people of Burma have built houses along the river on top of tall bamboo stilts that allow the floodwaters to rise below them. At the end of the river's journey, the Irrawaddy branches out into a wide delta of mangrove forests, marshes and meandering streams, where it finally empties into the Southern Ocean. The general centre of the river's course is an arid heartland that's known as Myanmar's dry zone, since it receives a relatively small amount of rainfall every year. The mountains that surround this wide basin on three sides soak up much of the moisture, holding back the clouds like a great wall. But the rain falls instead in the hills, and this rainwater then flows down through the great River Irrawaddy. This means that so long as you stay close to the river, the dry zone is actually never short of water. Since humans first arrived in Myanmar, people have flocked to the banks of this river to make their livelihoods, to farm their rice and to build their towns. The earliest cultures we have evidence for arrived In Myanmar around 11,000 BC, and by about 1500 BC, people in the region were already turning copper into bronze, growing rice and domesticating chickens and pigs. And they would be among the first people in the world to farm these animals for food. By around 500 BC, iron was being worked in the region. Since the earliest history, the rivers have also been highways. The people of Myanmar have always built watercraft, often rafts made out of the strong and light Burmese bamboo that grows everywhere along stream banks and in the lower hills or more refined barges. Made of teak wood, the teak tree has adapted to contain a large amount of natural oil, giving it an exceptional water resistance. The teak growing in Burma is so abundant that it has been used to make enormous constructions, like bridges that have lasted for nearly 200 years. One famous bridge, named U Beiin, spans more than a kilometer across Taung Taman Lake and is made up of more than a thousand teakwood pillars driven into the lakebed. The people here even build floating island gardens that rise and fall with the water level, and which for centuries have turned the surface of the lake into productive agricultural land. If people wanted to travel south, they could easily float their boats downstream. But the prevailing winds also blew south to north, meaning that it was also possible to sail against the current, making travel in both directions along the river relatively easy. The Irrawaddy river was so conceptually important to the history of this region that people in Burma would rarely talk about the country in terms of north and south, but rather used the words anja and aki upstream and downstream. One traditional Burmese poet describes the coming of summer in the landscape of the Irrawaddy Valley.
- [13:04]
Shin Arahan
As the hot season revolts against the cold. In the pattern of contrast, the sky becomes cloudy and winds are hot. Again it is summer. Leaves on trees turn yellow to fall to show new leaves. Stems twist or break, yet sprouts on tama trees are now soft greens like parrot eggs, While in summer trees thirst. In foothills, Tarzan flowers are climbing tabia trees effusing fragrance, mixing with the wafting air. At sunset, crow pheasants are cooing, and from afar come the cuckoo's notes. Now and again thunder is beating through heaven's expanses like lambara and deindi drums and I oh, I think of the pouring of water on the bodhi tree and of the absent companion in the golden palace of victory, and I am mournful.
- [14:07]
Paul Cooper
Like many languages in Southeast Asia, the Burmese language has different levels of register, depending on how polite or formal you need to be. And the land itself has different names, depending on the register you're using. In everyday speech, people most commonly use the name Burma to describe the country and its people, while the grander and more poetic name is Myanmar. Both of these names have been used alongside each other for centuries. When the country became a British colony, the colonial government used the informal name Burma, which is the name that British people first heard being used by common sailors and traders. But in 1989, the military dictatorship that then ruled the country changed the name officially to the grander name of Myanmar. Because of this complicated history in Myanmar today, the question of the country's name has deep rooted controversies. But in this episode, I will follow the example of the majority of Burmese people and use both names interchangeably, depending on context. And so it's on this geographical stage that the story of the Bagan Empire would play out in the dry zone of the country, surrounded on all sides by mountains and watered by the Great river highway, the Irrawaddy. For much of this region's history, whoever controlled the dry zone controlled the rest of the country. And so it was also a land soaked in the blood of conflict. There are two major sources for events in Myanmar during the medieval period. The first of these are the inscriptions left carved in stone at many temples and other buildings, which kings left in order to celebrate their deeds. And the second of these sources is the so called Chronicles of Burma. These chronicles are a diverse collection of documents written over many centuries by monks and scholars on different materials. Some are written on paper made of the Siamese rough bush tree or paper mulberry, glued into very long sheets and folded in a concertina fashion. While others are written on palm leaf or even carved into stone tablets. The first chronicle that has survived was written in the 13th century during the Bagan era. The so called Mahayzawin, or Great chronicle, was completed several centuries later in the year 1724. And it was followed nearly a century later by the Yazawin Tit, or New chronicle, which attempted to square some of the contradictions between the chronicles and the stone inscriptions. As its author writes in his introduction.
- [17:14]
Rustichello da Pisa
There are chronicles written by ancient scholars. But in those chronicles written by ancient scholars, there are some matters which do not accord with the inscriptions.
- [17:26]
Paul Cooper
Like many such historical documents, these chronicles were paid for by kings and produced under their supervision. And they are instruments of official propaganda. They are also full of exaggeration, poetic license and mythology, especially in the earlier reaches of Burmese history. They include truly ludicrous exaggerations about the size of armies, often describing battles involving tens of millions of soldiers. And they frequently include the colourful appearances of ogres, ghosts, ghouls, demons and magicians, along with countless figures from Burmese mythology. But in all their fantastical presentation, these chronicles can combine with official inscriptions to preserve relatively accurate dates and events. And they also preserve the folklore and traditional memory of the people. In the year 1829, the King Bagidao of born Burma appointed a committee of scholars to write a chronicle of the Burmese kings that would act as the final complete addition he gathered them in the glittering front wing of his residence, known as the Glass palace, and instructed them to get to work.
- [18:42]
Rustichello da Pisa
The king of the Law, seeing the many discrepancies and repetitions in the former chronicles, gave thought to the matter. Being convinced that a chronicle of kings should be the standard and not a thing of conflicting and false statements, he assembled his ministers and ecclesiastical teachers in the front chamber of the palace, which was variegated with divers gems and a fit place for the most exalted personages, and caused the chronicle to be purified by comparing it with other chronicles and a number of inscriptions, each with the other, and adopting the truth in the light of reason and the traditional books.
- [19:25]
Paul Cooper
This document, full of tangents and footnotes, would become known as the Glass Palace Chronicle. Despite its complicated nature, it's a remarkable text that gives us a real glimpse of how the people of ancient Bagan felt and thought about their lives and the world around them, as well as the birth of their empire. The origins of the people who first spoke the Burmese language are wreathed in mystery. The Burmese chronicles claim a line of kings going back to the second century, but modern scholars and archaeologists consider this to be extremely unlikely. One more plausible account traces the history of these people back to the early 9th century and the powerful kingdom named Nanchao. The power of Nanchao ruled over the area across the mountains to the east, in what is today the lofty province of Yunnan in western China. For years, the kings of Nanchau had set their sights on the rich river valley of the Irrawaddy. The year was 832 around the world. At this time, the Byzantine Empire, the last remaining part of what had been the Roman Empire, was fighting for its life against increasingly confident Arab empires inspired by the young religion of Islam. In the Mayan lowlands of southern Mexico, the last king of the soaring city of Copan, a man named Ukit Tuk, was commissioning a stone monument that would never be finished because his entire society was collapsing under the pressures of drought and warfare and the population was fleeing the city. In what is today France, King Pepin I of Aquitaine and his brother Louis the German, revolted against their father, the Frankish emperor, Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne. And in the mountains of southern China, the armies of Nanchau marched out to conquer the lands of Burma. At that time, the society occupying the dry zone around the Irrawaddy was a people who are remembered as the puerto. Exactly who the pew were and what they called themselves, we have little idea. It seems they spoke a language of the Sino Tibetan family, and lived in a loosely connected group of five city states in the Valley of the Irrawaddy. Their culture was heavily influenced by trade with India. In the preceding centuries, they had imported Buddhism as well as other Indian cultural concepts, architectural styles and political structures, and they had based their writing system on the Indian Brahmi script. 1 9th century Chinese text known as the Man Shu or the Book of Southern Barbarians, records the Chinese impressions of this land and the Pu people who lived there.
- [22:45]
Rustichello da Pisa
To the south of Yongchang city, one first passes beyond the lands of the Tang Empire to phoenix blue jungles, then to vast skies, then to clearings. There lie huge rivers and settlements. They live in multistoried houses without city walls, sometimes painting their teeth, always dressing in untreated cloth with rattan worn about their waist, red silk cloth wrapped about their topknot, and other hair hanging behind in a decorative fashion. Peacocks nest in nearby trees and elephants are as large as water buffalo. The locals customarily raise elephants to till the fields and burn their dung as fuel.
- [23:33]
Paul Cooper
The armies of Nanchau marched through the narrow mountain passes, thickly carpeted with forest, and swept through the Burmese lowlands on a series of devastating raids, taking both plunder and slaves.
- [23:49]
Rustichello da Pisa
In the 10th year of the Zhenyuan era, Nanchao sought out and attacked them. On the 21st day of the 12th month of the third year of the Xiantong era, at the cliffs of the Suli river, some 2,000 to 3,000 troops massed.
- [24:05]
Paul Cooper
According to ancient sources, the Nanchao deported many thousands of the Piu people who lived and farmed in this fertile valley and sent them away into slavery. Among the troops of Nanchau were a group of cavalry warriors from a people known as the Mien, a small ethnic tribe from the high plateaus who spoke an ancestor of what would become the Burmese language. But these troops had dreams of going their own way. And once they had tasted freedom in the valley of the Irrawaddy, they had no desire to return to Nanchau used to life in the rocky mountain plateaus of the north. The arid plains of Burma were a familiar ecology to them. And with the native population there devastated by the Nanchau raids, their lands were there for the taking. The Mien broke away from the kingdom of Nanchao and decided to settle in this new land, and ultimately they would found a kingdom there. Other historians contest that the Burmese speakers already existed in the valley and that they were part of the Piao people and had nothing to do with the Nanchao raids. But as with everything in these early stages of the chronicles, we're left with a hazy fog of contradictions and uncertainties. And the answer actually may have been a mix of both. On the other side of the world, at the same time, sea going Norsemen from Scandinavia were arriving in great numbers on the shores of eastern England, sometimes as raiders, sometimes as settlers, and sometimes as refugees. And over the next century, they would come to topple the Saxon kingdoms that ruled there. And as they did so, they would plant a distinctly Norse character on the people of England and the English language that emerged from them. I think it's possible that the Burmese people then settling in the Irrawaddy Valley, may have arrived in similarly complex circumstances and formed a similar hybrid culture with the people who lived there. With much of this matter concealed in the fog of history, what we can say with some certainty is that around the year 849, just 17 years after the date given to the Nanchau raids, the Mien built a walled fortress at a place on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy River, a place that would later come to be known as Bagan. The chosen location for the city of Bagan owed much to the geography of the land around it. It seems to have been built on the ruins of a previous settlement belonging to the Piu people and stood on a sizable bend in the meandering course of the Irrawaddy River. The settlement had easy access to water and was surrounded by countryside that would be the most fertile and productive of all Myanmar for the next 500 years. Part of the reason for this was the region's violent geological history. Around 50 kilometers to the southeast of Bagan was a great dormant volcano named Mount Popa. This volcanic cone, covered in thick forest and shaded bamboo groves, is a sacred site that for centuries has been the focal point of worship for the people of Burma. Southwest of Mount Popa is Taung Khalat, or Pedestal Hill, a striking sheer sided volcanic plug which rises more than 650 metres above sea level. And where a Buddhist monastery now sits, towering over the forested landscape below. Mount Popa has long been believed to be the home of powerful spirits that the Burmese call gnats. And the worship of these spirits has always existed alongside Buddhist religious practices in a complex relationship. While this soaring mountain rising out of the flat plain has long captured the imaginations and religious sensibilities of the people, it was also partly to thank for the success of their society. The ash that volcanoes spew out during their eruptions is rich in elements such as iron, magnesium and potassium, minerals that are crucial for the healthy growth of plants. When volcanic rock and ash weather and leach into the soil, these elements are released. And so combined with the fertility of the silty soil along the river itself and the plentiful water supply, this meant that the soils in this region were immensely productive. And the people of Bagan were able to conduct two bountiful rice harvests per year and grow other crops like pulses, sesamum, cucumbers and millet. On the spot that they'd chosen for their new city, the Mien built a thick and high wall out of brick. And they built it according to the traditions of Buddhist cosmology and numerology. The inner wall of Bagan was broken by 12 gates to represent the 12 signs of the zodiac, with four main gates at each of the cardinal directions north, south, east and west. The walled area of the city wasn't huge, little over a square kilometre in fact. But the walls contained only the palaces of the kings and the headquarters of his administration. Outside this fortified centre, a sprawling city would soon grow up around it, much of it built out of teak and bamboo that has left little trace in the archaeological record. By the mid 10th century, a king was in place in Bagan. Although we don't know the exact names and dates for these early kings, 1 9th century Arab traveler to India and Burma named Suleiman Nadwi wrote an account of the powerful army that one king of Burma fielded.
- [30:32]
Suleiman Nadwi
They say that when he marches to battle, he is accompanied by about 50,000 elephants. He campaigns only in winter. Indeed, his elephants cannot stand thirst and so they can go forth only in winter. They say that in his army, even the washermen amounted between 10 and 15,000.
- [30:54]
Paul Cooper
Thanks to the ongoing study of inscriptions, we do know the names of at least two kings who ruled around the turn of the first millennium. Niang U Saura Khan and Kiang PI Min, both of whom were once considered to be legendary. By the year 1004, a Chinese source from the Song dynasty records an ambassador arriving from what they called the Pukan kingdom, which is thought to refer to Bagan. And it seems this ambassador was seeking recognition from Song China, which was then considered the great power in the region, suggesting that the kingdom of Bagan was now confident enough to look outwards and assert itself to its neighbours. But reliable sources on these early kings are extremely thin and all mixed up with legend. The first king of Bagan who steps out of the historical record in full colour would not come for another half century. He was long considered the founder of the Bagan Empire. And although we now know that it was likely in existence for two centuries or so before his reign, he is arguably its first great king, and certainly the king who would lead it to new and glorious heights. He was a man named Anorata. Anaurata's early life was one of upheaval and family conflict. His father was the king, but he had been a usurper on the throne of Bagan, having overthrown the previous king in a rebellion. And like most usurpers, Anarta's father lived in constant fear of one day being overthrown himself. Anarata grew up as a prince in the palace with his two older stepbrothers, men named Kizo and Socate. These brothers were actually the sons of the previous king, but Anarata's father had adopted them and raised them as his own, and so they grew up together. But his older stepbrothers, Kizo and society always treated the younger Anorata as though he were an inferior, something that must have rankled the young prince. And it's clear that these two brothers also dreamed of one day reclaiming some of the glory that their adoptive father had stolen from them while he was still a boy. Anaurata's treacherous brothers plotted a coup to overthrow his now aging father. As the Glass Palace Chronicle recalls.
- [33:43]
Anantasurya
When Kizo and society came of age, they built a pleasant monastery and said to King Kunsor, come and call thy blessings on the monastery. And the king took no heed nor scrutiny, but hearkened to them. And Kizo and Sochete seized the king and threatened him and made him become a monk. And they spread the rumour far and wide that the king, in his zeal for bliss, hereafter had become a monk.
- [34:18]
Paul Cooper
This palace coup must have scandalized the royal court. And despite the relative commonness of coups of this kind, the historians of Burma are clear in their view on it. The Glass palace chronicle recounts how a number of evil omens accompanied this shocking act.
- [34:38]
Shin Arahan
About at the time of his fall, a miracle was seen in the Pato Pagoda. The Friday star trampled on the moon. The moon was a full circle. On the second day of waxing, the earth quaked seven days. The water stood still in the river.
- [34:56]
Paul Cooper
First, the brother named Kizo ruled as king. But the chronicles recall that he was killed one day by a hunter who mistook him for a deer.
- [35:07]
Anantasurya
He built a royal box in the marshes of the Chinwin and visited the 10 villages of Bangyi, hunting deer. One day, a hunter lay waiting for famine at the place where they drank water, the king likewise came to the spot to wait for deer. And the hunter knew not that it was the king, but shot with the bow and hit him, that he died. He passed at the age of 28. About the time of his death, an ogre laughed for a full half month and threw stones at the palace.
- [35:49]
Paul Cooper
After this unfortunate accident, the other treacherous brother, Socate, took the throne. And it's perhaps not unreasonable to wonder whether this story of the hunter accidentally killing the king might actually be a polite way for the chroniclers to get around the fact that the new king had actually had his brother Kizo assassinated. Through all of this upheaval and treachery, the boy Anorata seems to have simply got on with things. He was allowed to keep his royal status at court and to live there with his mother. And in exchange he attended to the two kings who had overthrown his father and taken away the throne that would one day have been his. But when Anorata had reached the age of 30, King Socate took things too far. He referred to Anahorata at court using the word nitta naungme, a a compound word that means something like brother, son. Confused by this, Anaurata travelled to the monastery where his father had been exiled and asked him what it meant to the old embittered former king. The meaning of this was Socate intended to marry Anorata's mother.
- [37:10]
Anantasurya
Anorata told that word to his father king, and his father said, because he wishes to take thy mother, thus he speaks. And Norada was exceedingly angry, and he begged for the horse and weapons and gear that Sakra gave his father, and his father gave him the arendama lance, the thilaunta sword, the ruby ring and the rubber.
- [37:43]
Paul Cooper
It's hard to know whether Anaharata was truly motivated by his mother's honour, or whether he had been planning this the whole time and had just now found a convenient excuse. Whatever the case, Anarata rose in rebellion against his stepbrother. He fled to the holy volcano Mount Popa, and marshalled his forces there, gathering lords and chieftains who had had enough of the brothers treacherous antics. Then he marched on the capital of Bagan. The Glass palace chronicle records what happened next.
- [38:22]
Anantasurya
Now, when he had mustered his forces, he marched on Bagan and sent a message to his brother, saying, will you give up the throne or will you do battle? And when Socrate heard the words of his younger brother, he was exceedingly wrathful and answered, his mother's milk is yet wet upon his Lips. And he says he will fight me. Let all my ministers look on. I will fight him man to man on horseback. When Anurata heard his brother's words, he was glad. And when the appointed day was come, he took the lance and sword his father had given him and mounted the demon horse and came to the stream of Tamati and Sochete. His brother saw him coming and went forth to meet him. Then said Anuradha, brother, you, the elder, strike first. And Sochetay thrust at him with his lance. But Onorata parried it with the arendama lance and it reached not his body, but pierced the pommel of his saddle. And when Socute saw it, he was sore, afraid and trembled. Then said Anorata, brother, your turn is over. Now it is mine. Meet it as best you can. And he smote him and pierced him with the arendama lance, so that it went in at the front and came out behind. And Soc's horse ran away with him to the river. And there he died.
- [40:11]
Paul Cooper
This encounter, as rendered in the Glass palace chronicle, feels like something out of the Arthurian legends, complete with chivalric duels, legendary weapons of great power, and the fight to save a woman's honour. We would be foolish to take it at face value as a historical source, but it does give us a sense for the turbulent political landscape of medieval Myanmar and what must have seemed like the clashing of great heroic forces, the stuff of medieval romances, of myth and poetry. With his brother defeated, Anaurata took the throne. The chronicle records that Anurata was riven with guilt over the death of his brother and attempted to soothe his conscience with the construction of great temples and works of infrastructure throughout the kingdom.
- [41:12]
Suleiman Nadwi
Anarata could not sleep for full six months because he had slain his elder brother. Then Sakhar visited him with a dream, saying, king, if thou wouldst mitigate thine evil deed in sinning against thine elder brother, build many pagodas, monasteries and rest houses, and share the merit with thine elder brother. Devise thou many wells, ponds, dams and ditches, fields and canals, and share the merit with thine elder brother.
- [41:50]
Paul Cooper
Archaeological evidence does show that Anaorato was indeed a prolific builder. Soon after coming to the throne in the year 1044, he marched into the north, secure the northern border, and built 43 forts along the Irrawaddy River. The north was traditionally the gateway to Burma, the lands through which all potential conquerors had previously marched. And so it's clear he was keen to secure his land from invasion. King Anarata built his network of fortresses as an armored corridor that protected the valuable farmlands of the north and allowed his armies to move quickly along well supplied routes. He also fortified many of the towns in this region, building strong city walls and garrisons. While in the north, he also built extensive irrigation canals and improved the existing water infrastructure to get the most out of the land's potential. And many of the canals and reservoirs that he built are still in use today, nearly a thousand years later. Having secured the north to his satisfaction, King Anarata turned his attention to the south. The coastal cities of southern Myanmar were a clutter of independent city states, many of which had grown wealthy on the traffic of trade that passed by sea to the lands of India and China. Passage through the mountains that surround Myanmar was difficult and so most goods that came into the country flowed through these port towns. Having the good farmland was one thing, but if Bagan had to keep paying the trade tariffs to these wealthy port cities, it could never become the kind of great power that King Anarata clearly dreamed of. According to the chronicles, he marched south and first besieged the city of Tartan, as the Glass palace chronicle records. Although it's worth noting that in its typically exaggerated style, it's probably multiplying the size of the army by at least a factor of a thousand.
- [44:09]
Rustichello da Pisa
He gathered all his mighty men of valor and marched by land and by water. He sent 800,000 boats and 80 million fighting men.
- [44:21]
Paul Cooper
By land.
- [44:22]
Rustichello da Pisa
He made his four generals march up front, while he marched forth with the main army in the rear. His land force, it is said, contained 800,000 elephants, 8 million horses and 18 million fighting men. It is said said that the line of troops was so long that when the first troops of the army reached the frontier of Thaton territory, the rearguard still had not departed from the capital.
- [44:52]
Paul Cooper
Seeing as this enormous force would far exceed the population of Burma today and would have constituted about a quarter of the world's total population at the time. We can assume this is an exaggeration, but through exaggeration, the chronicles make their point. The army was no doubt impressive. With this force he laid siege to the city of Tarton, and after holding out for three months, the city capitulated. From there, Anahrata absorbed a number of the other coastal cities into what was now becoming a true empire. By this time, the city of Bagan had earned itself the Sanskrit title Arima Dnpura, or the city that tramples its enemies. Linking his capital to these coastal cities meant that Bagan was now connected by sea routes to the great centres of culture in India, and perhaps most crucially, with the island of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a nation off the coast of southern India, and for much of its history, it has held on to a distinct cultural character. While Buddhism in its homeland of mainland India had mostly died out by this point, it had survived in Sri Lanka. And this island nation had become the heartland of an ancient and austere form of Buddhism known as Theravada. These new cultural links would transform the culture and religion of Myanmar and bring it into contact with new forms of religious thought. And for King Anahurata, freshly returned from the battlefields of the south, they would provide an irresistible opportunity. That was a chance to take on some of his oldest rivals. Not an enemy kingdom or empire, but an institution at the heart of his own kingdom, the Buddhist church itself. For centuries, a strain of Buddhism known as Ari Buddhism was the predominant form of religion in Myanmar. Ari Buddhism was a hybrid form of Tibetan Buddhism and drew heavily on traditional Burmese beliefs. As a result, their practices were quite different to how we might picture a Buddhist monk today. Unlike in most strains of Buddhism, the Ari monks grew beards and had long hair. They wore blue black robes dyed with indigo, drank alcohol, and practiced a form of martial arts similar to boxing. They rode horses and even occasionally went to war. They also worshipped the figure of the Naga, a powerful form of snake spirit drawn from Hindu mythology, and built statues depicting these in their temples. Owing to their long history in Burma, the Ari monks enjoyed enormous power in the kingdom of Bagan. They owned vast estates and held enormous stores of wealth. The Mahaya Zawin, or great chronicle, even records the scandalous claim that the monks were practicing a version of the rite of prima nocte, or first night, taking the virginity of brides before their wedding nights.
- [48:30]
Marco Polo
From then on, the sons and daughters of all, starting with and including the king, ministers, generals, village administrators at that time, when preparing to get married, must be sent to the monks at nightfall to give the prime of their flower of virginity. It was said that at dawn they were freed and allowed to wed. The king, having matured, had become virtuous, and he was disconsolate to hear and observe such wrongful practices.
- [49:05]
Paul Cooper
It's hard to know whether to take this scurrilous claim seriously or whether it was a later piece of royal propaganda designed to discredit these monks. But one thing was for certain. The Ari monks were extremely powerful, and King Anhurata had long dreamed of crushing their establishment and remaking the church in a different image, an image more closely under the control of the crown king Anarata would find the opportunity to do this when he met a visiting sage named Shin Arahan. This Shin Arahan was from the south of Myanmar, the region Anarata had recently absorbed. The sage had travelled in Sri Lanka and he told King Anarata of the merits of the different branch of Buddhism practiced there, a branch that claimed to be the closest to the original teachings of the Buddha. This was the Theravada Buddhism incubated in the grand Sri Lankan cities of Anuradhapura and Polonarua. This strain of Buddhism emphasizes priests living simple lives, living by begging, not eating after midday, refusing all intoxicants and not even touching money. Considering the seemingly uncontrollable nature of Burma's Ari monks, to King Anuratta, this must have sounded ideal. The Glass palace chronicle recounts the king's conversion as a spiritual epiphany.
- [50:44]
Shin Arahan
The king was full of joy and rapture and spoke again, entreating him, my lord, preach me somewhat. Yes, but a little of the law preached by the Lord the Master. And Shin Arahan preached the law, beginning with the things not to be neglected. Then the king's heart was full of faith, steadfast and immovable. Faith sank into him as oil filtered a hundred times, soaks into cotton a hundred times, teased.
- [51:17]
Paul Cooper
Perhaps King Anarata was genuinely moved by the sage's teachings. But it's clear he also spotted an opportunity. If he brought this new branch of Buddhism to his kingdom, he could weaken the hold of the Ari monks. And so King Anarata went to war with the church. First, the king went after the monks ability to recruit. He brought in new laws that meant that common people were no longer obliged to give up their young children to become monks as they had been before. Next, he changed the law to remove the punishment for those who deserted their life as a monk. As a result, many dissatisfied monks simply hung up their robes and left to do something else. Bit by bit, Anahurata chipped away at the monks power with every tool at his disposal. There were, of course, those who fought the changes. Anarata banished thousands of monks who resisted his reforms. Many of these fled to the nearby volcano of Mount Popa, or east into the narrow FR forested valleys of the Shan hills. And while they were never completely wiped out, they would never again wield the same power in the kingdom. To celebrate the conversion of his land, Anar sent an envoy to Sri Lanka and asked, rather boldly, that their most precious relic, a tooth belonging to the Buddha himself, be sent to Myanmar to be placed in one of his great temples. The Sri Lankans understandably refused. But at the last moment they remembered that they had a spare, and the envoy was sent back to Burma with what they were told was another tooth of the Buddha. Like the small fragments of wood taken from the cross used at Jesus crucifixion that showed up in churches across medieval Europe, teeth of the Buddha had a way of multiplying in Southeast Asia according to the needs of the people. But it was good enough for Anartha. When the new tooth relic arrived in the capital by boat, the king himself waded out into the river to meet it. Anorata was an effective ruler, but at times he could also be uncompromising and harsh. While he was often able to achieve what he wanted in his kingdom, he did this largely at the expense of his popularity. And this is nowhere more apparent than in the story that is remembered as the tragic romance of his son, Chian Sita. Chian Sita was a great general and had led his father's armies into battle many times. And when the people in the region of Pegu complained about raiders destroying their homes and stealing their animals, the king sent Kyan Sita to deal with the situation. The story goes that the prince saw off the raiders, and the people of Pegu were so grateful that they sent him home with various gifts for the king. Gifts of gold hairs belonging to the Buddha and a beautiful young woman named U Kin intended to be offered to the king as a bride. But on the journey home, Prince Chian Sita and U Kin fell in love. When Anorata found out about this Arthurian betrayal, he exiled his own son, who was forced to flee across the countryside of Myanmar and go into hiding. This story, with its forbidden love, betrayal and dramatic finale, has proved irresistible to generations of playwrights, songwriters and poets in Myanmar. But ultimately it seems that this uncompromising nature would finally lead to the downfall of king Anarata. On 11 April 1077, the king was riding through the outskirts of Bagan on the back of his elephant. The chronicles record that a tree spirit, the what the king had previously displeased, appeared in the guise of a wild buffalo and gored him to death. And then demons took away his body so that it was never found. Much more likely is that the king's unpopularity finally got the better of him, and he was ambushed and killed by a group of rivals who ensured that no evidence remained of their crime. The chronicles recall his death with great sorrow.
- [56:08]
Rustichello da Pisa
Thus, this noble king, full of glory, might of arm and Dominion, who for full 33 years of royal prosperity had advanced the welfare of the religion. His own welfare and that of the generations of his sons, grandsons and great grandsons died at the age of 75. About the time of his death, bees clave to the throne door of the palace, an ogre laughed from the top of the Tarabar gate, and lustre of the royal sword faded and a vulture alighted on the palace.
- [56:47]
Paul Cooper
After the death of the great King Anarata, his son Saul took the throne at the age of 26. Although not particularly young by the standards of royalty, he would soon gain the title Min Lulin, or the Boy King, on account of his inexperienced and naive style of ruling. After only five years of mismanaging the kingdom, he faced a rebellion in the south among the Mon people who lived in the coastal cities that his father had conquered for not the first time. The chronicles recall a quite unlikely sounding version of events. In this version of the story, the King Sau lost at a game of dice with one of his nobles, a childhood friend of his named Yaman Khan, and in a fit of sore losing rage, he dared the noble to rebel against him.
- [57:43]
Suleiman Nadwi
One day the king and Yaman Khan played a dice, and Yaman Khan won. And he rose up and clapped his elbows, said King Sulu, you have won a mere game of dice and you dare to arise and clap your elbows? If you are a man, rebel with Pegu, your province. In truth, asked Yaman Khan, we kings, said the king, should we utter anything but truth?
- [58:15]
Paul Cooper
According to the chronicle, Yaman Khan promptly returned to Pegu and started a rebellion, as the king had suggested. While this account may not exactly be true, it probably does contain some truth about the character of King Saulu, who by all accounts had a petty and childish nature and seems to have treated the business of ruling as though it were little more than a game. Now, facing an open rebellion, the childish King Saulu turned to someone that his father had long ago exiled for the crime of falling in love with a woman promised to him, that is, his half brother, the romantic hero of songs and poetry, the man named Kyan Sita. Kyan Sita came out of exile and agreed to help the childish king lead his armies against the rebellion in the south. But King Sau would prove to have no better judgment on the battlefield than off it, and he would be fooled one day by a devious ploy.
- [59:24]
Anantasurya
King Solu and Chian Sita encamped when they reached the island of Pai Daughta, saying, it is too late today. Tomorrow we shall fight then in the Dim moonlight, Yaman Khan came forth and provoked them to do battle. So they followed and fought without heed or observation. And the king Solu, thinking that an elephant figure sat in the mud, was a real elephant, set forth to fight. And the royal elephant he was riding fell into the mud and stuck. And King Sulu climbed down from his back and ran, and entering a hole in the banyan tree in the forest, hid there. And his elephant was captured. And the whole army was despoiled and fled. There was none to stop them.
- [60:23]
Paul Cooper
Saulu was soon found hiding in the banyan tree and was taken into captivity by the rebel Yaman Khan. According to another slightly fantastical episode in the chronicles, Saulu did actually have one chance to escape when the hero Chiansitta personally snuck into the enemy camp to rescue him. But Saulu feared that Ciansitta secretly wanted to kill him, and he refused to go with his rescuer. He believed that the rebel Yaman Khan, who had been his friend and who he had played many games of dice with, would not harm him, and he.
- [61:01]
Shin Arahan
Stole him from the place where he was kept. Now, while Kianzita bare him on his shoulder, Salu thought, Kianzita is one whom my father has injured, whom I have injured. I fear he steals me away to kill me. But Yamankan is son of my tutor. Surely he will not kill me. Salu yelled out, Kianzita is stealing me. Kianzita exclaimed, then die, you fool, die. The death of a dog at the hands of these scum flung him down and ran for his life. He swam across the Irrawaddy and eventually made back to safety.
- [61:40]
Paul Cooper
But like many of his other calculations, Saulu's gamble didn't pay off. Fearing more escape attempts, Yaman Khan had the king killed in April of the year 1084. In the game of life, it seems the king Saulu was always rolling ones. After the death of Saulu, Qian Sita continued to lead the royal armies of Bagan against Yaman Khan's rebellion, and the rebel leader fled south on the river on his opulent golden barge. Chiansitta sent a hunter named Ya Sin to follow him and to kill him if he could. The chronicle recounts what happened next, and.
- [62:28]
Suleiman Nadwi
Yasin the hunter caught him up below Iwatha, and he climbed a fig tree and uttered lovely notes like the voice of a bird. When Yamankan heard that sound, he opened the door of the golden raft and looked, saying, what bird is that? Uttering notes so sweet and wonderful. Now he had but one good eye and Yasin the hunter, from the place where he waited peeping, drew his bow and shot and hit the eye of Yamankan. And he died.
- [63:06]
Paul Cooper
Now the once exiled Chian Sitta was the only person in line for the throne. Kyan Sita came to the throne on 21 April 1084 and assumed the title R. Tribhuvanaditya Dhammarja, which means something like fortunate Buddhist king, son of the three worlds. In many ways, he was the perfect uniting figure for the country after such a period of violence and division. While in exile from his father, he had lived for seven years in the southern Mon region among those coastal cities, and there he had developed a genuine love for the Mon people and culture. Kian Sitar invited Mon nobles to court and appointed them to high positions in the kingdom, some of whom had been part of the rebellion only years before. The result of this generous approach was a long period of peace in Myanmar. And with that peace came a period of great prosperity. During this time, the capital city of Bagan grew to previously unimaginable size and wealth. The population boomed as a result of the growing agricultural potential of the city. But Bagan also attracted people from across the region. Artists, sculptors, masons, architects, monks, scholars, and teachers. We can track the booming of the city in the ever increasing number temples that were built in the 300 years after the reign of King Anarata, each of which we can reliably date with carbon dating. During this time, as many as 4,000 temples were built, along with thousands more brick structures supporting them. Many of these temples had vast stupas or domed shrines at their center, and the effort and expense of constructing these must have been enormous. This building effort would have required an army of masons and carpenters, plasterers and sculptors, gold and silversmiths either paid in cash or working in exchange for food, animals and land. These artists would have required the support of an even larger array of supporting industries. Masons required brick builders, who required firewood brought by lumberjacks and porters. The sculptors of countless statues of the Buddha needed miners of marble and dolerite and elephant trainers to transport the heavy stone blocks. And all of them needed rice, fruit, vegetables, meat and game. And of course, the alcoholic spirits brewed from rice or the foaming toddy made from the fermented SAP of the palm tree. With work to be had in every corner of the city, people traveled for thousands of kilometres to find employment in the enormous construction site that the city of Bagan had become. At one point, the Glass Palace Chronicle lists the professions of People who were deported from a conquered city during the reign of King Anorata. And from it we get a sense of all the ways that someone could make their livelihood in the city of Bagan.
- [66:42]
Anantasurya
Thereafter he sent away separately, without mixing, such men as were skilled in carving, turning and painting. Masons, moulders of plaster and flower patterns, blacksmiths, silversmiths, braziers, founders of gongs and symbols, filigree, flower workers, doctors and trainers of elephants and horses, makers of shields, round and embossed men skilled in frying, parching, baking and frizzling yakin, hairdressers and men cunning in perfumes, odors, flowers and the juices of flowers.
- [67:28]
Paul Cooper
From the small fortress capital that it had once been, Bagan expanded to fill an area of more than 100 square kilometers, or more than twice the size of ancient Rome. Estimates for the population around this time range as high as 400,000 people living in the city alone. During this time, many of the largest temples were constructed. And the largest of all is the temple known as the Tat Bin Yu Temple. Consecrated in the year 1144. The vast spired pagoda of this temple rises to a height of over 61 meters or more than 20 stories. Another temple nearby is called the Ananda Temple and it rises to a height of. This temple served not only as a place of worship, but also as a monastery and a library. The temple's first and second floors were used as the residence of monks, while the third floor was used to hold images. The fourth floor was used to store manuscripts and books and the fifth and top floor stored the precious relics. The building of temples in Bagan was was seen as the ultimate form of devotion that a king could engage in. When one later King Alaung Situ dedicated the completing of the Shui Gu Y Pagoda, he spoke the following prayer in which he envisions the temples as a kind of grand infrastructure of the soul, as a bridge across Samsara or the endless cycle of rebirth and towards eternal enlightenment.
- [69:10]
Marco Polo
By this abundant merit I desire here nor hereafter no angelic pomp of Brahmas, suras, maras, nor the state and splendours of a monarch, nay, not even to be the pupil of the conqueror. But I would build a causeway sheer across the river of Samsara and all folk would speed across thereby until they reached the blessed city.
- [69:40]
Paul Cooper
These temples were held in the highest reverence. One of the inscriptions at the unfinished Mingun Patodaugi temple, built sometime after the Bagan era, contains the following blessings for those who respect the Sanctity of the temple, as well as a series of blistering curses against any who damage or.
- [70:01]
Rustichello da Pisa
Desecrate it, who favours and upholds like me, the gift of faith which I thus offer with all my heart, Be he my son, grandson, or any future king who comes after me, queens, princes, royal ministers, high or low, may he be favored above others with the wheel of treasure, may he be endued like King Mandatta with glory, majesty and power. But whoever spoils even so much as an oil lamp here, may he be oppressed with the eight dangers, the 10 punishments, the 32 results of karma, the eight calamities, the 96 diseases. May he be suddenly overtaken with a great affliction which a thousand doctors may not avail to cure. Having suffered thus for long, generation after generation. When his bodily elements dissolve, may he suffer by going in and out among the eight chief hells and the 12 minor hells, and the 40 limbos of Yama and Loki. May he suffer with the hosts of demons, titans and hungry ghosts. Even if he survive all these sufferings, may he revisit 5000 times these lands in the form of a boneless and miserable creature, a ghost, a worm, a water leech.
- [71:32]
Paul Cooper
While royal annals like the Glass Palace Chronicle are extremely detailed on the comings and goings of Bagan's kings, unfortunately they have very little to say about what life was like for the average person during this time. For a picture of daily life for the average person in Bagan, we can turn to the pages of the classical poetry of Myanmar. Myanmar has had a great poetic tradition for centuries, and the time of Bagan was no exception. Many poets flourished among its scholarly communities in its temples and royal courts, and the manuscripts that these scholars produced were exceptionally valuable. Records show that in the year 1270, a complete set of the Buddhist texts known as the Tripitaka cost up to 3,000 kyats, or nearly 50 kilos of silver. That would be enough to buy more than 5,000 acres of rice, land, four large monasteries, or 150 slaves. The exceeding expense of these texts meant that literacy was never widespread and most common people would not learn to read or write. One 15th century poet named Shin Mahratta Tara, wrote a poem that describes the qualities required by a man of learning.
- [73:05]
Rustichello da Pisa
If one does not try with the eagerness of a daring eagle that firmly catches a hen, if one does not study and ponder, does not question and does not discuss, and knows only how to read palm leaves, how can one become a well known man of letters? Like a cat eating a shrimp with special enjoyment, a learner must study all texts. He must become sharp as teeth of a saw, penetrating deeply into all discussed matters to unravel the subject from beginning to end without fear, like a lion.
- [73:54]
Paul Cooper
One area that these poets can really educate us about is in the realm of food. A 17th century poet named Wungyi Padaytayasa gives a description of the diet of an ordinary farmer who supplements his meals of rice and curry with various kinds of animal life that he finds in his fields.
- [74:19]
Shin Arahan
The peasant plows his field, and in his rice fields are water filled holes, home to many small crabs. Tossing these into his shoulder basket together with frogs, snails, supu plants, kazoon and kinhon leaves, and pilo, all for his curry. Stoopingly, he goes back home. Sweet and juicy is the curry, cooked on arrival and laid out quickly with kian hing and kiwetna vegetables. The rice is hot and the curry is hot, with pungent spices that make one suck. Scooping sizable handfuls. Bending, he eats, surrounded on all sides by his sons and grandsons.
- [75:06]
Paul Cooper
Another source of information is the painted walls of certain temples and pagodas in Bagan, which show us a little of the city's dress styles, too. At least among the wealthy, the people's costumes in these paintings are combinations of Indian and Chinese cultures. They wore long dresses and shawls, with most of the materials made of silk and cotton. Both men and women wore bangles on their wrists and arms, necklaces and foot chains, and seemed to have worn jeweled belts on their waists. One prominent cultural practice among many ethnic groups in Burma was extensive tattooing, especially of the legs, and this would likely have been evident on the streets of Bagan. One European visitor in the 19th century commented on this practice.
- [76:02]
Suleiman Nadwi
Every male Burman is tattooed in his boyhood from the middle to his knees. In fact, he has a pair of breeches tattooed on him. The pattern is a fanciful medley of animals and arabesques.
- [76:16]
Paul Cooper
But ultimately, the people who lived out their countless lives in the streets and alleys of Bagan, farming rice and cucumbers, tending to their animals and constructing the temples, have been forgotten. And it's only the raging dramas of the royal court that have been remembered in any true detail. In the coming centuries, those dramas would reach a fever pitch. Throughout his reign, King Chian Sita struggled to have a son, so much so that he almost lost hope. Without a son to provide a clear line of inheritance, the kingdom could be thrust into civil war. When a son was finally born to him in the year 1090, he was so overjoyed that he immediately crowned the baby boy king and stepped down to serve only as his regent. The boy was called Situ Kyan. Sita would die 22 years later and his son Situ took the throne with no opposition. Like his father, he would be an excellent ruler in terms of politics and warfare. But it seems he wasn't the best parent. He had several sons, but before they could come of age it became clear that for one reason or another his oldest son was not suitable for the throne. And so Situ had him banished. The second son who would go on to take the throne was a man named Narattu. And he has been remembered to history as a tyrant and a psychopath. When King Situ finally fell ill in his old age this impatient son took the opportunity to speed up his inheritance.
- [78:12]
Anantasurya
Now when he reached the age of 101 he fell grievously sick. His son Naruto removed him from the throne and kept him within Shwegu Pagoda. And the king recovered consciousness a while and said, this is not my palace. Whose trickery is this? And the king was convulsed with anger. His whole body burned like fire. Then his son Naruto thought, if the king arises from his sickness I shall be utterly destroyed. So with clothes and garments he pressed down the king until he died.
- [78:57]
Paul Cooper
Narattu wanted to take the throne for himself. But there was still the problem of his banished older brother. He devised a plan to place his brother on the throne first to make things look a little less suspicious. But of course he would not sit there for long.
- [79:15]
Marco Polo
When he reached Lepenport, Narutu, according to the oath he had sworn went down to the boat and shouldering his brother's sword, he raised and set him on the throne. After his anointing his food was poisoned and that night he died.
- [79:37]
Paul Cooper
With all these threats dealt with King Naratu ascended to the throne himself. And he would rule in a predictably tyrannical style. As the Glass Palace Chronicle recalls King.
- [79:51]
Shin Arahan
Narathu had once been the demon guardian of a mountain who had shaded the Lord so he was great in glory, might and dominion. His ministers both great and small, his followers and all the people stood in fear and awe of him. He raged furiously with wrath and pride. The king was brutal and savage. His queens, concubines and handmaids stood in fear and awe of him and loved him not but hated him and cursed him in their hearts. All the inhabitants of the kingdom starved in toil and sweat and many forts, villages and domains were ruined.
- [80:32]
Paul Cooper
Seemingly desperate to assuage his guilt for his heinous actions. Naratu increasingly isolated himself in his palace and ordered the construction of what he intended to be the largest and most ambitious of all of Bagan's temples, known as the Dharma Yang Temple. But Naratu would not live to see this great temple completed. It's not clear who gave the order, but Naratu was in his palace one day when he was approached by a group of eight men dressed as monks. When the men got close enough to the king, they drew their daggers and each stabbed him when they were sure that he was dead. In a kind of suicide pact, they turned their knives on each other and themselves. As the Glass palace chronicle records, they.
- [81:23]
Rustichello da Pisa
Ascended the palace and drew nigh the king encircling him under guise of presenting the Conch and Nezagrass. And they pierced the king with the sword until he died. Thereafter, they pursued the minister Thedeka to pierce him, but they could not catch him. Then they pierced their own bodies with the sword and died. All eight of them.
- [81:48]
Paul Cooper
The reign of King Naratu did great damage to the kingdom of Bagan and harmed its reputation abroad. But in the end, it wasn't tyranny, rebellion, or kingly blundering that brought down the empire. After several more royal assassinations, coups, and throne seizures, the kingdom would eventually return to peace under the long reign of a king named Narapati Situ, who would reign until the year 1211. But all this time, the forces that would eventually tear this great city of temples apart were already at work. In fact, in an ironic twist of fate, it would be the temples themselves that would contribute to the gradual weakening and the eventual fall of this entire civilization. Despite the efforts of King Anarata to rein in the excessive power and wealth of the Ari monks, the Theravada church that replaced them would soon become just as wealthy. And by the height of Bagan's golden age, it would far surpass the wealth and power that its predecessors had enjoyed. For the rulers of Bagan, the church was a powerful tool for building their own legitimacy among their subjects. The kings of Burma ruled under the title Dharmaraja, meaning a king who would uphold the duties of the church whenever a new king was crowned. He would begin his reign by lavishing gifts on nearby religious institutions, building new temples, and donating plots of land to the monks. But it wasn't just the king who contributed to these institutions. The church also encouraged private citizens to donate land and money in exchange for benefits when they were reborn in the next life. One ancient Burmese poem offers a starkly transactional approach to these incentives, offering a kind of tiered system of rewards.
- [84:07]
Suleiman Nadwi
He who gives and urges others to give things in charity will be reborn rich, surrounded by numerous attendants and holding vas possessions, he will be a shining moon in the assembly of men. He who earnestly encourages others to give donations freely, while himself offering nothing in future rebirths will be deficient in material belongings. Yet many attendants and relatives, sons and grandsons, will be in his entourage. Whosoever neither himself is generous nor urges others to be, will encounter evil fate. After his body's disillusion, never feeling satiated, scarcely finding eating plants, showing hunger day and night, he will become a hungry spirit, meeting all kinds of misery.
- [85:10]
Paul Cooper
With such punishments awaiting those who refused to donate to the church in the next life, it's not hard to see why people donated freely and generously. These donations of gold goods and labor made the church incredibly wealthy. But it was the donations of land that really tipped the balance. In the kingdom, anything given to the church was given forever. And so, as time went on, an increasingly large amount of the landmass of Myanmar and much of its productive farmland was slowly donated away piece by piece. To the Buddhist church, this wouldn't have been so much of a problem except for one thing. That's the fact that according to a long standing tradition, the Buddhist Church in Bagan was exempt from paying all taxes. This meant that these large temple estates ended up acting like tax havens. Today, the equivalent of 10% of the world's wealth is held in tax havens, where the rich keep their money to avoid paying tax on it. But in some modern states like Russia, several Latin American countries like Argentina, and in the oil states of the Persian Gulf, the amount of wealth held in offshore tax havens can exceed 60%. A state's ability to function is directly linked to its ability to raise funds and to marshal its collective resources for the public good. Money taken into tax havens has effectively left the economy. And in Myanmar between the 10th and the 13th centuries, the situation began to look similar to some of the modern world's worst areas for tax evasion. In Bagan, by the late 13th century, as much as 63% of the kingdom's land that had once belonged to the crown, as well as the majority of its gold and silver, was in the hands of the tax exempt church. For successive kings of Bagan, this resulted in something of a bind. Their entire legitimacy rested on the system of belief that began and ended with the Buddhist church. And so the thought of using any kind of force to Seize land from the unarmed Buddhist monks was unthinkable. The church wasn't just a beloved religious institution, it was also the land's biggest employer and countless people depended on it for their livelihood. And so, if the Burmese kings had any hope of getting their land back, they would have to use the doctrines of the Church against it. Buddhist doctrines in Burma did allow for a sort of release valve on the power and influence of the Church. Monks were supposed to live by the Vinaya, or the Buddhist code of conduct, which emphasizes relinquishing yourself of earthly possessions. And it was considered the duty of kings to periodically purge the church when it wandered too far from this ideal. If the church had become too wealthy, then, by definition, it must have strayed from the Vinaya. And so a process called sasana could begin. This was a kind of inquisition, in which individual temples were inspected and excess wealth or land could be confiscated according to a strict religious code. It was a way for the crown to claw back some of the wealth it had lost to the church. But the process of Sasana was slow and often insufficient. Once a stage of sosana purifying of the church was finished, often the population felt newly inspired to donate to their now pure and righteous church. And money would start flowing back to the monks in even greater amounts. After a king had purified the church, his descendants would often give even more lavish donations the moment they came to the throne, in order to increase their own legitimacy. And so, over the centuries, the wealth of the empire of Bagan flowed in only one direction. From the great reservoir of the royal treasury downhill into the tax exempt sector of the religious establishment. The historian Michael Aung Twin summarizes the situation in the following.
- [89:55]
Anantasurya
The kingdom of Bagan declined because the factors that had nurtured it in the first place became, in time, forces that contradicted and destroyed it. The seeds that sowed the destruction of Bagan are what earlier made its success possible. And the institutions that led to prosperity and power eventually involuted and impoverished the state. What had been a blessing became a curse. But because Bagan society was unable and unwilling to change what were once constructive forces when they became destructive ones, the political power of the dynasty collapsed.
- [90:41]
Paul Cooper
By the reign of a king named Tilo Minlo, who ruled in the early 13th century, it's clear that the royal treasury was struggling. He was the last king of Bagan to build any significant temples, although he did so mostly in remote regions away from the capital. The kings who followed would be apparently penniless and no great constructions would go up after this. When discussing the collapse of societies, historians often talk about what they call the remote origins of the collapse. These are slow, broad trends that build up over time. Cracks that begin to appear and wear away at the structure, sometimes invisible. And then there's what they call the immediate origins. This is the wrecking ball that comes swinging in and delivers one decisive blow that reverberates through the cracked and weakened structure and sends the whole thing shattering into smithereens. The state of Bagan's reduced ability to marshal its land and resources was not fatal by itself, but it left it increasingly vulnerable to outside events. In the year 1258, a series of rebellions began in in South Arakan and Martaban and posed a challenge to the empire. With as much as two thirds of its land held by the Church, the Bagan state struggled to fund the military campaign necessary to contain these rebellions. Though it would ultimately bring order back to those regions. After a struggle of many years, it was a clear indication of the weakened state of the country. But soon an even more terrible threat began to loom. This was a force of the size and strength that the people of Bagan had never encountered before. A force that even now was sweeping across the Eurasian landmass, washing away empires that had ruled for centuries and leaving death and destruction in its wake. These were were the armies of the Mongol Emperor, Kublai Khan. Kublai Khan was a grandson of the great Mongol warlord Genghis Khan, who had united the steppe peoples of Mongolia and led them on a campaign of conquest the likes of which the world had never seen. Conquering lands from the South China Sea to the Mediterranean, from Siberia to Afghanistan. Kublai was 12 years old when his grandfather Genghis Khan died. And after the death of the great Khan, the vast Mongol empire began to split into warring rival states. Kublai Khan would find himself at the head of the Chinese portion of the Mongol Empire and founded a dynasty known as the Yuan, with his capital at Beijing. In just three generations, the Mongols had gone from nomadic wanderers to emperors. And over time, the Yuan dynasty would come to rule over most of present day China, Mongolia, Korea and southern Siberia. In the late 13th century, at the same time that the Bagan empire was struggling to contain its rebellious northern provinces and claw back some of its land and wealth from its church, the Emperor Kublai Khan was engaged in an immense war against his last remaining rivals in China. These were the Southern Song dynasty, a large Chinese kingdom that had until now, resisted the advances of the Mongols. But by the year 1270. The song were on the ropes. Kublai Khan had blockaded the Yangtze river, cutting off their supply routes, and he was now keen to encircle and destroy any remaining Song armies. But he had one problem. There was still a single remaining escape route for the Song armies, and that was through the narrow mountain passes in the southwest of China and into the lands of Myanmar. If the Song armies were able to escape through the lands of Bagan, they could continue their fight. And so Kublai Khan resolved to bring the empire of Bagan under his sway and close off the Song's final escape route. With his forces all tied up in total war against the Song, Kublai at first had no desire for conflict with Bagan. He sent an envoy to the Burmese court and demanded that the king there swear loyalty to him and pay a small tribute. As Mongol tactics went, this was about as polite as you could get. But things would not go according to his plan. The king of Bagan at this time was a man named Naratiapate. He was a man of overwhelming appetites, who loved his food and drink, so much so that the Glass palace chronicle records that he was the reincarnation of an ogre who lived on Mount Popa.
- [96:24]
Marco Polo
The Lord had left a prophecy upon the top of Mount Tangvi that the ogre, guardian of the mountain, should become king thrice in Bagan. Even so it came to pass, for he became king once, it is said, as Narathia Pate. And because he had become a man from the state of an ogre, he was violent in envy, proud and wrathful, and gluttonous in eating and drinking. He was great in wrath, haughtiness and envy, exceeding, covetous and ambitious. He had 3,000 concubines and maids of honour.
- [97:06]
Paul Cooper
If the chronicles are to be believed, this king Naratiapate also ruled tyrannically, with some of his preoccupations ranging into the territory of the bizarre.
- [97:19]
Shin Arahan
The king, being one who had received the Lord's prophecy, suffered not from any of the 96 diseases, and never so much as sneezed nor yawned. And so none was allowed to sneeze or yawn in his presence. If anyone happened to sneeze or yawn, he beheaded him. One day, a young handmaid in the king's presence was dearly desired to sneeze, and because she could not refrain it, she put her face to a great jar and sneezed, hoping that the king would not hear. But, alas, the sound was louder than if she had sneezed openly. And the King asked, what sound is that?
- [98:00]
Paul Cooper
It's only through the gentle intervention of one of his queens that the unfortunate girl was allowed to escape with her life. King Naratiapatti was also given over to boasting, especially about his famous appetite, as one inscription left by him at the Mingala ZD pagoda in 1274 shows King.
- [98:24]
Rustichello da Pisa
Naratihapati, supreme commander of 36 million soldiers and who is the consumer of 300 dishes of curry, daily enshrined 51 gold and silver figurines of kings, queens, nobles and maids of honor. On Thursday, the full moon of Khe, sun of the year 636.
- [98:50]
Paul Cooper
And so in January of the year 1271, a group of ambassadors arrived in Bagan from the court of Kublai Khan in Beijing with the Mongol Emperor's offer. These ambassadors asked to see the Burmese King Naratiapate, and when they were let into the throne room, they demanded that the king submit to being a vassal of the Mongols. This ogre like king refused. The Glass palace chronicle remembers this encounter in dramatic terms and uses the Burmese name Taruk, or Turk to describe the Mongolian ambassador.
- [99:31]
Suleiman Nadwi
The Tarok sent 10 ministers and a thousand horsemen to demand golden rice pots, vessels of gold and silver, gold and silver ladles, because, said he, they were once offered by King Anar. Furthermore, some chronicles say that they came demanding a white elephant. The Tarok ambassadors, in making demands, showed no due respect nor reverence in the king's presence. Therefore, the king commanded, slay these ten ministers and thousand horsemen let none escape.
- [100:09]
Paul Cooper
Both Burmese and Mongol inscriptions of the time indicate that this sentence was not actually carried out with the king's advisors, perhaps pleading with him to be rational. But it shows the extent to which the Mongol demands angered this king Naratiapathy. Back in Beijing, we can only imagine the scenes as Kublai Khan was informed of this insult. But he was still reluctant to order an invasion. He was battling the last remnants of the Song dynasty in the south, and he had just attempted an ill fated sea invasion of Japan, capturing the island of Tsushima and attempting to land on the Japanese mainland. But his ships had been destroyed in a pair of typhoons that the Japanese would later name the Divine Winds or Kamikaze. And 10,000 Mongol soldiers had been lost. After this embarrassment, Kublai Khan had no great desire to commit a large number of troops to a small border dispute with Bagan. Instead, he ordered his armies to move into a wide swathe of contested borderlands in the forbidding mountain ranges between his empire and Burma. In response, the King of Bagan refused to back down and sent his own armies to recapture the region. Backed by a large force of war elephants, this Burmese army marched up into the thickly forested hills. We can only imagine how the soldiers felt marching to war with this unknown enemy, of which they must have heard terrifying tales. One Burmese poet, writing later would give a description of an army marching to battle.
- [102:09]
Anantasurya
We are not afraid of anything. We are daring and brave, ready to sacrifice our lives marching to the royal city on this day, fixed as the day of victory at our camp in the forest. Verdant are the branches full of small flower buds. Sweet are the sounds of the military drums and gongs in the soft evening's twilight. Just as mists and clouds are dispersed, so too must we destroy our enemy.
- [102:47]
Paul Cooper
This army finally met the Mongol garrison at a rocky, forested gully known as the Vocang Valley. The explorer and adventurer Marco Polo, by this time was serving as a diplomat in the court of Kublai Khan. He recalls the force that the King of Bagan sent.
- [103:08]
Marco Polo
So this king prepared a great force and munitions of war. And he had, let me tell you, 2,000 great elephants, on each of which was set a tower of timber, well framed and strong, and carrying from 1216 well armed fighting men. And besides these, he had of horsemen and of footmen good 60,000 men. In short, he equipped a fine force as well befitted such a powerful prince. It was indeed a host capable of doing great things. And what shall I tell you? When the king had completed these great preparations to fight the Tartars, he tarried not. They arrived within three days of the great Khan's host, which was then at Vokarn, in the territory of Zardandan.
- [104:02]
Paul Cooper
It's likely that for many of the Mongol soldiers, this was their first experience of seeing war elephants fielded in combat. These enormous creatures would have advanced in a terrifying wall with their wooden superstructures carrying archers. Marco Polo describes what happened next.
- [104:23]
Shin Arahan
When the king's army had arrived in the plain and was within a mile of the enemy, he caused all the castles that were on the elephants to be ordered for battle and the fighting men to take up their posts on them. And he arrayed his horse and his foot. The horses of the Tartars took such fright at the sight of the elephants that they could not be got to face the foe, but always swerved and turned back, whilst all the time the king and his forces and all his elephants continued to advance upon them.
- [104:54]
Paul Cooper
But the Mongols had learned their tactics on the vast open steppes of Central Asia. And they knew that when an enemy was too strong to face directly, you could always retreat and pepper them with arrows from a distance. And that's exactly what what they did.
- [105:11]
Rustichello da Pisa
When the Tartars perceived how the case stood, they were in great wrath and knew not what to say or do. But their captain acted like a wise leader who had considered everything beforehand. They did as he bade them and plied their bow stoutly, shooting so many shafts at the advancing elephants that in a short space they had wounded or slowly slain the greater part of them as well as of the men they carried. When the elephants felt the smart of those arrows that pelted them like rain, they turned tail and fled. And nothing on earth would have induced them to turn and face the Tartars. And then, too, they plunged into the wood and rushed this way and that, dashing their castles against the trees, bursting their harness and smashing and destroying everything that was on them.
- [106:09]
Paul Cooper
With the enemy in disarray, the Mongol cavalry charged down on them, and the forces of Bagan were scattered. The Mongol chronicles can barely conceal their pride at the size of this victory. They record that only 700 Mongol soldiers were able to defeat a burmese army of 50,000 while only losing a single soldier. But this is clearly an exaggeration. The Burmese chronicles, perhaps understandably, make no mention of this disastrous campaign. The main force of Bagan had been utterly defeated on what should have been their home turf, and there was now little standing between the Mongol armies and the rich river valley of the Irrawaddy. The Mongols were quick to capitalize on their victory. Kyong Sin, the next fort along the road, fell just six days later, on 9 December 1283. And now the Mongol forces pushed on into the Irrawaddy valley. It's clear from the exaggerated tones of the Burmese chronicles just how much of a threat this Mongol invasion force was.
- [107:29]
Suleiman Nadwi
The Turkmen stood all the parts of his army to the number of 6 million horsemen and 20 million footmen, and they came marching.
- [107:38]
Paul Cooper
The situation clearly looked bleak. King Naratiapate ordered two of his generals to take his remaining forces and fortify the town of Nyasangyan on the crucial river crossing of the Irrawaddy.
- [107:54]
Anantasurya
Coming to Nasngang town, they made it strong and girded it with forts and moats and ditches, and fought in their defense at the river crossing of Bamor. For three full months they slew the enemy and spared not even the feeders of elephants and horses, but slew them all. But when 10 myriad men were dead, the Taruks sent 20 myriad. When 20 myriad were dead, he sent 40 myriad. The King's men were weary and foredone, and as soon as the Taruks crossed the river, Na Song fell.
- [108:40]
Paul Cooper
At the news of the fall of Nya Saun Gyan, the ogre, like king's courage, failed him. He fled the city of Bagan and headed to the south.
- [108:52]
Anantasurya
Then the king called his ministers and consulted with them, saying, bag Un town is now too narrow for us, in depth, too shallow. It cannot contain the hosts of fighting men, the hosts of elephants and horses. Let us go straight away to the south and establish a strong town.
- [109:20]
Paul Cooper
For this reason, King Naratiapatti would go down in history in Burma by the name Tarok Pie Min, or the king who fled from the Turks. He retreated into the south of Burma and left the rest of the country leaderless and in chaos. With no remaining confidence in the king of Bagan to protect them, many of the empire's provinces simply broke away and looked to their own defences. For the next year, the king attempted to negotiate with the Mongol invaders, and throughout this time, the lowlands of Burma were a battlefield convulsed in a series of constant running skirmishes. It's not actually certain whether or not the Mongol forces reached the capital city of Bagan. According to Burmese sources, the generals that the king had sent to defend the north seem to have been able to slow the Mongol advance and even repel them about 160km north of the capital. Some sources claim, quite plausibly, that the Mongol soldiers struggled in the baking heat of Myanmar's dry zone and suffered from diseases like malaria, which sapped the momentum out of their campaign. Archaeology seems to support this story, since on the temples and structures of Bagan there's little evidence of war damage or burning. Marco Polo in the court of Kublai Khan claims that the Mongols did reach Bagan, but explains that they left the temples intact out of some mixture of respect and superstition.
- [111:05]
Marco Polo
They marched until they came to the country and province of Miyan, and they did conquer the whole of it. And when they found in the city the two towers of gold and silver, they were greatly astonished and sent word thereof to the Great Khan, asking what he would have them do with the two towers. Seeing what a great quantity of wealth there was upon them, and the Great Khan, being well aware that the king had caused these towers to be made for the good of his soul and to preserve his memory after his death, said that he would not have them injured, but would have them left precisely as they were. And that was no wonder either. For ye must know that no Tatar in the world will ever, if he can help it, lay hand on anything appertaining to the dead.
- [111:57]
Paul Cooper
Whatever the situation, the Mongols had no interest in a drawn out conflict. By the year 1287, the Mongol Khan had agreed to a tentative peace. The Burmese delegation formally acknowledged Mongol power over their kingdom and agreed to pay an annual tribute that was a certain proportion of the annual agricultural output of the country. But the agreement broke down only a month later. In late June, the defeated and humiliated King Naratiapate was returning from the south, travelling north up the river on his royal barge to take up his position as a puppet king in the capital. He had fled years before, but on 1 July 1287, King Naratiapatte was intercepted en route by his second son, Thihatu, who had him assassinated.
- [112:55]
Suleiman Nadwi
They went upstream in rout and disarray, without union or order. And when they reached the port of Primai, Thehattu stopped the royal raft and put poison in the food. He offered it and said, o King, eat. But the king knew that there was poison in the food and he would not eat. When Thehatu heard, he had caused 3,000 soldiers to go and stand around the royal raft with gleaming swords unsheathed within their hands. Then he took the ring off his finger and he let fall drops of water over it and gave it to his queen. And he made a solemn vow and said, in all the lives wherein I wander through Ratsamsara until I reach Nirvana, may I never have a son born to me again. And he took the food and ate. And even as he ate, he died.
- [113:53]
Paul Cooper
The death of this king was the final death blow for the disintegrating kingdom of Bagan. All remaining provinces that had once been loyal to it now broke away. There was no king at all for the next two years. And when one of Naratiapate's sons, named Kiausoir, did emerge as ruler, he would reign over only the diminished and impoverished city of Bagan itself. And he had virtually no army. He would be assassinated along with his son and heir on 10 May 1299. It was during this time that the explorer Marco Polo visited the city of Bagan and saw with his own eyes the glorious sights of its temples, now diminished by the years of war. Throughout this whole period, the Mongols could have easily moved in to occupy the territory of Bagan. But it seems they had no interest in doing so. In fact, they would send no more expeditions to restore order. Their Policy seems to have been to allow the fragmentation of the kingdom to continue and to watch from afar as the once great power that had challenged them simply tore itself apart and sank into irrelevance. One 14th century king named Mingyi Swasauke wrote a later inscription with a brief sad note.
- [115:33]
Rustichello da Pisa
About this time the Bernese empire disintegrated because of internal strife.
- [115:42]
Paul Cooper
The collapse of the empire of Bagan was now complete. The area of the city of Bagan would remain occupied for much of the century that followed. And people would continue to farm and keep animals in the lands around the great temples and stupas as they slowly crumbled beneath the forces of the elements. Other kingdoms would occupy this region over time, some kings even crowning themselves at Bagan and giving themselves the titles of the old emperors. But the city would never again hold the same prominence. A smaller number of new and impressive religious monuments still went up to the mid 15th century. But after that, new temple constructions slowed to a trickle and then stopped entirely. And bit by bit, the city fell into ruin. The area of the city of B? Ghan remained a pilgrimage site up until the modern day. While farmers grazed their cattle on the grasses, pushing up through the bricks, pilgrims travelled for hundreds of miles to visit its unique landscape and see the awe inspiring sight of its golden domes and spires rising out of the morning mist of the flat river valley. Some of the larger and more impressive temples would even be maintained and repaired for centuries to come. But thousands of the less famous and more out of the way temples fell into disrepair and ruin, some disappearing entirely, crumbling into ruined mounds swallowed up by the forest. The English writer William Somerset Maugham, who travelled through Burma and Thailand in 1923, wrote a memoir of his travels entitled A Gentleman in the Parlour. In it, he writes about how he was affected by the sight of the ruins of cities like Angkor, Ayutthaya and Bagan.
- [118:15]
Rustichello da Pisa
In these eastern countries, cities are founded, increased to greatness and are destroyed in a manner that cannot but fill the western traveler, accustomed for many centuries now to a relative stability with a certain misgiving. Here and there in the jungle, far from any habitation, you will find ruined temples overgrown with trees and among the dank verdure, broken gods and elaborate bas reliefs as the only sign that here was once a thriving city. And you will come across poverty stricken villages that are all that remain of the capital of a rich and powerful kingdom. It is a somber reminding of the mutability of human things.
- [119:06]
Paul Cooper
For Maugham, the sight of these ruins reminded him that the empire he lived at the heart of might also one day be consigned to history. Maurm writes evocatively of his first visit to the ruined temples of Bagan. As he approached by steamboat along the great river Irrawaddy.
- [119:29]
Rustichello da Pisa
A light rain was falling and the sky was dark with heavy clouds. When I reached Bagan, in the distance, I saw the pagodas for which it is renowned. They loomed huge, remote and mysterious out of the mist of the early morning like the vague recollections of a fantastic dream. I do not know how many pagodas there are at Bagan. When you stand on an eminent, they surround you, for as far as the eye can reach. They are almost as thickly strewn as the tombstones in a cemetery. They are of all sizes and in all states of preservation. Their solidity and size and magnificence are the more striking by reason of their surroundings. For they alone remain to show that here, a vast and populous city once flourished. Today there is only a straggling village with broad, untidy roads lined with great trees. A pleasant enough little place.
- [120:32]
Paul Cooper
Over the next few days, Maugham would explore the crumbling ruins of these temples and pagodas and walk among the dilapidated buildings. And everywhere he found the place infused with a strange and lingering melancholy.
- [120:49]
Rustichello da Pisa
Within the pagodas, images of the Buddha sit in meditation. The gold leaf has long since worn away from the colossal figures, and the figures are crumbling to dust. The fantastic lions that guard the entranceways are rotting on their pedestals, a strange and melancholy spot. Grass grows in the chinks of the pavement, and young trees have taken root in the crannies. They are the refuge of birds. Hawks wheel about their summits and little green parrots chatter in the eaves. The birds were singing noisily in the trees. The crickets chirped and the frogs croaked, croaked, croaked. Somewhere a boy was whistling a melancholy tune.
- [121:48]
Paul Cooper
I'd like to end the episode with a reading from one of the great poets of the Bagan period, a man named Anantasurya. Ananta Surya was a scholar who served as the chief minister in the kingdom of Bagan under King Naratenka, who ruled in the latter half of the 12th century. As a result of a palace coup, the king's brother seized the throne and began purging the government of those loyal to the previous king. Because of this, Anantasurya was ordered to be executed. And just like Marco Polo sitting in his jail cell in Genoa a century later, on the other side of the world. Ananta Surya turned in his time of imprisonment to writing. While he sat in prison awaiting his death, he wrote the following poem, which has gone down in history as one of the most beautiful pieces of writing produced during the efflorescence of art and culture that took place during the Empire of Bagan. It's a poem of loss and forgiveness, about ultimately accepting the fate of all things to pass into darkness and dust. As you listen, imagine what it would feel like to walk the emptying streets of the city of Bagan as its temples crumbled and grasses grew up through its streets and homes. Imagine watching trees push through the bricks of the temple stupas and shaded doorways, animals running wild in the streets while the sun set in a red haze over the hills and the poets sang of the end of days.
- [123:43]
Shin Arahan
Often when one man prospers, another must suffer destruction. Such is is the nature of things. A courtier's satisfaction in enjoying kingly confidences in golden palaces and a king's own good fortune are merely bubbles on the surface of a vast ocean, momentary and evanescent. If dictated by mercy and pity, I were to be released and freed from execution, still I would not escape death. Inseparable am I from Karma. It is the nature of every living thing to decay. Should I again meet my Lord the King in one of my future rebirths in the cycle of Samsara, begrudging him nothing, all I would do is to lovingly forgive him, for impermanent is my body of blood, Danger and death are constant foes, and in this world must ever be.
- [124:56]
Paul Cooper
Thank you once again for listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast. I'd like to thank my voice actors for this episode, J. Forrester, Michael Hajia, Antonis, Alexandra Bolton and Paul Cassel. Readings in Burmese were performed by Daniel San. Thank you also to my researcher Brian Stolk. If you enjoy listening to Fall of Civilizations as a podcast, but would like to see them brought to life on video, you can also find us on YouTube with state of the art drone photography, 3D reconstructions, maps and reenactments. I love to hear your thoughts and responses on Twitter, so please come and tell me what you thought. You can follow me PaulMMCooper if you'd like updates about the podcast, announcements about new episodes, as well as images, maps and reading suggestions, you can follow the podcast at fallofsivpod. With underscores separating the words, this podcast can only keep going with the support of our generous subscribers on Patreon. You keep me running, you help me cover my costs and you also let me dedicate more time to researching, writing, recording and editing to get the episodes out to you faster and bring as much life and detail to them as possible. I want to thank all my subscribers for making this happen. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading onto patreon.com fallofcivilizationspodcast or just google fallofcivilisations patreon that's P A t r E o n for now. Goodbye and thanks for listening. Sa.