For years, as a regular visitor to Myanmar, I had resisted going to Bagan. It had seemed too touristy. When I began writing my book, Myanmar in the World: Journeys through a Changing Burma , I had to finally brace myself for a visit. One cannot possibly write about Burma without visiting Bagan — it is the first capital of the Bamar people, ground zero of the Burmese civilisation. It rose as a fortified city after the Nanzhao raids of the ninth century, which established Burmese-speakers as the dominant population in the Irrawaddy River Valley, and expanded continually for 200 years. To it goes the credit of creating a centre around which kingdoms and governorships around the country could arrange themselves; it is the basis of Myanmar as we know it today. It is to Myanmar what Angkor Wat is to Cambodia, Borobudur to Indonesia, and Ayutthaya to Thailand. As an archaeological site, it is among the richest in the world.
When I finally arrive in Bagan, by road, from Mandalay, it is too hot to do anything. For two days I remain inside my hotel, a resort with the word ‘sanctuary’ in its name, sprawled along the eastern bank of the wide-hipped Irrawaddy. From about 5.30 am to about 8 am, it is pleasant to sit by the river, drink my coffee and read the Glass Palace Chronicle , the legends and stories of kings, among them those that built Bagan up to the greatest capital of the Burmese people.
BAGAN, MANDALAY REGION, MYANMAR - 2017/11/29: Pagodas of Bagan in the plains of the archaeological site. (Photo by Frank Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Two days later, a cyclonic storm moving from the eastern coast of India, across the Bay of Bengal, cools things down. I venture out of my sanctuary and into the Bagan Archaeological Zone.
Justifiably proud
Hopping from one temple to the next stupa to the other monastery, this one the tallest, that one the grandest, over there the oldest, listening to the fabulous stories of how each came to be, full of intricate detail and liquid mythologies, the sense one is left with — long after one has clambered down from the sunset point, taken the last photograph of the day, and returned to evening cocktails on the hotel veranda — is the sense of pride.
I am from Kolkata, so I am no stranger to people living in the past. Yet, perhaps because Myanmar is what it is today, the pride you encounter — on the fresh faces of the young men and women who have found employment as tour guides, although they studied for a degree in law or geology; in the expectant staff at the hotel who take your arrival as endorsement not only of their TripAdvisor ranking but of their history; and among the general populace who look at you looking at their temples and think that their country is contemporary again — feels fragile. It is the pride of those born to a high station but who, per circumstance, have to maintain their dignity in the face of myriad daily humiliations. Only an unwavering, unquestioning belief in the quality of their blood preserves them.
It isn’t that the pride is wholly misplaced. Among Bagan’s 3,800-odd structures that remain are works that are simply marvellous. The murals inside the early twelfth century Gubyaukgyi temple, and at the more famous Ananda Pahto, under restoration by the Archaeological Survey of India, are exquisite, reminiscent of the wondrous Mogao caves in Dunhuang, China. The stone carving at the diminutive Nan Phaya, King Manuha’s prison-home, is effortlessly graceful, as are the carvings in stucco at the Htilominlo. There are countless examples, and everyone who visits has their own list of Bagan’s best.
Much-needed acceptance
But the grandeur of Bagan does not lie inside a single monument — it is the whole of it, so iconised in the panorama shots of flat plains strewn with the silhouette of stupas rising darkly, like long gone creatures. It is when looking out on to this view, from atop Shwesandaw or Shwegugyi, at sunrise or sunset, that one can fully grasp the significance of Bagan, and its hold on the psyche of the Burmese people. It is the idea of continuity, of a landscape, of societal values, of the Buddha’s place in the world, and of the bloodlines of rulers.
Bagan had many rulers, but Anawrahta is the most famous, for he was the first to unify central Burma with the Mon territories in the South and bring back an ‘original copy’ of the Tipiṭaka , the Buddhist canon, to his capital, along with the Mon king, Manuha, as his prisoner. An early eleventh century temple dedicated to Manuha, where he is said to have been placed under house arrest, is among the highlights of Bagan’s temple tour.
Tourists riding bull carts travel along a road across an ancient Buddhist temple in Bagan on July 5, 2019. (Photo by Ye Aung THU / AFP) (Photo credit should read YE AUNG THU/AFP/Getty Images)
He was the one who established Buddhism as a state religion, institutionalising the monastic order and initiating the system of monk-monarch patronage that is now taken for granted. His successors would build on these foundations to simultaneously expand and control territory, while creating a larger co-dependency with the monkhood, the ‘Sangha’. Understanding that relationship is fundamental to understanding the meaning of Bagan.
Faith’s living monuments
The outside world, specifically that which sits in judgement and decides what is heritage and what is not, has never fully accepted this aspect of Bagan. Until this July, when, finally, after decades of giving it the cold shoulder, UNESCO inscribed it on its World Heritage List, placing it among sites such as Babylon, Rome, and Jaipur.
It is a grudging acknowledgement that has been long in coming. In 1996, UNESCO had turned away Bagan’s bid to qualify on the grounds that the then military government had used controversial methods of conservation — steel-tied bars to reinforce centuries-old columns, whitewash on antique murals, new finials on top of pagodas — thereby compromising the integrity and value of the site. A 2005 article in The New York Times quotes a UNESCO official as describing these works as ‘a Disney-style fantasy version’.
Buddhist devotees light candles as an offering at the Sulamani ancient pagoda in Bagan on July 6, 2019. - The UNESCO World Heritage Committee on July 6 approved the registration of the ancient city of Bagan as a World Heritage site. (Photo by Ye Aung THU / AFP) (Photo credit should read YE AUNG THU/AFP/Getty Images)
Conservation and what it constitutes has been a constant source of tension between Burmese and international experts. The popular perspective in Myanmar is that pagodas are living monuments meant for daily worship, which means people must be allowed to repair them, renovate them, re-gild them, not leaving it to be as it was previously, an ossified temple unconnected from the belief system which gives it life. UNESCO officials themselves have acknowledged that, to Burmese Buddhists, ‘restoring a temple doesn’t mean so much restoring it to how it originally looked as enabling it to become a place of worship again’.
Despite these philosophical divergences, what has never been in dispute is Bagan’s universal value as a cultural site. It was, and remains, a place where significant chunks of Southeast Asian history proceeded and can still be observed. The UNESCO’s decision to recognise it now also signals the present government’s willingness for more traditional conservation practices, including taking a harder stance on the reckless commercialisation that has marked the site. It should pave the way for more international collaborations, greater support for improving institutional capacity, and better funding.
I am certain that the next time I visit Bagan, the pride I had encountered would have grown more confident. I only hope that it will be a pride that is rooted not only in history but also in the role the current generation of Myanmar citizens will play in preserving this precious history.
Abhijit Dutta is the author of Myanmar in the World: Journeys through a Changing Burma (₹799, Aleph Book Company, 2018).
