History

The Pagan Kingdom consolidated control of the Irrawaddy valley in the 9th century, unifying for the first time the territories that would eventually become modern Myanmar. The first king to rule from Bagan as a unified capital is traditionally held to be Pyinbya (c. 849 AD), though the city’s political significance grew decisively under Anawrahta, who seized the throne in 1044 and converted to Theravada Buddhism. Anawrahta’s conquest of the Mon kingdom of Thaton in 1057 brought skilled Mon craftsmen to Bagan and inaugurated the great temple-building era.

The logic of construction was theological. In Theravada Buddhist practice, building a temple accumulated merit — a form of spiritual credit that would improve the donor’s position in future rebirths. Larger, more elaborate temples generated more merit. Kings built to secure their dynasties and futures; nobles built to rival their neighbours; merchants built to launder commercial success into spiritual standing. The result, over two centuries of compounding expenditure, was a landscape unlike anything in the Buddhist world: not one or a dozen great temples but thousands of them, built so close together that the horizon in every direction was punctuated by stupas.

The resource cost was ruinous. Temple construction consumed tax revenue, corvee labour, and agricultural land donated in perpetuity to support temple maintenance. By the late 13th century, the Pagan state had weakened itself through a century of monumental building. When the Mongol forces of Kublai Khan invaded in 1277, the kingdom could not resist. The Pagan Kingdom collapsed after a series of Mongol incursions between 1277 and 1287. The capital was abandoned. The temples remained, empty, slowly reclaimed by vegetation, until the plains were rediscovered by the modern world.