
16 Bagan
More than three thousand zedis, (Sans.> cetica reminder, reliquary, temple; Pali > caitya/ chaitya a Buddhist cave temple) and kyus/gyis (Sans.> gu- dark, hidden; guda cave, cf. gudi, gudhamandapa) were constructed on an arid plain at Bagan (Pagan) in central Myanmar (Burma) between 1050 and 1300, towards the end of the periods treated by these two websites; (lesser numbers of temples have continued to be built there to the present.) These often massive monuments offer a third variant on the deployment (dispositif, array) ofthe basic elements of a “temple mountain” – its prasat/vimana, shikhara and talas.
The Ananda temple (c.1100,) among the earliest, largest and most influential at Bagan. wraps two concentric, forty-foot high, vaulted corridors, a double ambulatory, around the temple’s solid core. It contains eighty shrines illustrating scenes from the life of Buddha and might be compared with Early Chalukya sandhara temples, e.g. the Upper Shivalaya, Badami or Durgagudi, Aihole. These galleries are roofed by six terraces with aedicular antefixes at each of their corners and faux-portals at their centers, roughly analogous to the terraces of a Khmer “temple mountain” or the talas of a Karnata Dravida vimana with their central nasi or toranas. They are lined with glazed ceramic plaques depicting the 547 Jataka Tales of Theravada Buddhism, recounting the previous, virtuous incarnations by which Buddha attained nirvana. These are notoriously difficult to view because they were not intended for didactic purposes, only to gain “merit” towards release from samsara, the reason for Bagan’s sobriquet, “the plain of merit.”
A distinctive, “second,” “corncob” superstructure with five boums or tiers, presumably derived from Nagara Latina and Bhumija shikharas, rises above the terraces.It is crowned by a characteristic, bell-shaped stupa and hti or finial. Around the base, more than 1000 plaques show Mara’s grotesque army of demons and their adversaries, the stalwart gods marching to do battle against each other; these might be compared with to the narrative adhisthana friezes of Hoysala temples.

Still larger temples were to follow in the later 12th and early 13th Centuries, including some whose six terraces were interrupted by a full second story with its own internal gallery and shrine, The earliest of these, the Sulamani of 1183, rises to a height equal to a twenty-story building and boasts more than six million bricks.. The Thisa-wadi, dating from 1334 when Bagan was already in decline, nonetheless, added a third story, in this respect at least, equaling the number of terraces at Angkor Wat. The vaults required to span such spaces and bear such loads were made possible by the adoption by Bagan’s architects, unique in South and Southeast Asia, of the keystone and voussoir (Roman) arch rather than the corbelling employed at Angkor and in Karnataka.
In terms of comparative morphology with Karnata Dravida and Khmer temples, Bagan’s kyus/gyus do not project harantaras (cloisters) of miniature tiers above themselves or external galleries around themselves, rather they internalize these inside their vast square vessels. There worshippers circumambulate past their many internal shrines and four colossal statues of the tathagata Buddhas. The fifth, the Adi-Buddha, is, however, missing; there is no garbhagriha or central prasat to house him, just a solid core, perhaps signifying the disappearance of Buddha into parinirvana and the collapse of all dimensions into the impenetrably dense, non-manifest.
This inward-contraction is counter-acted by a powerful vertical thrust, simultaneously up and down the temple’s terraces, shikhara and spire or hti. The temple’s multiple levels symbolize the descent of being through the invisible arupadhatus and rupadhatus, the “formless” and “form realms,” widening at the shikhara, like a stupa’s anda or bell ringing out Buddha’s dharma to the world. It then broadens further across the roof terraces, equivalent of the Tusita heaven at the top of Mt. Sumeru (Meru,) home of the devas and highest of the kamadhatu or “desire realms,” before sinking down its slopes (or walls) onto the terrestrial “plain of merit” beneath the worshippers’ feet.
A very complete but eminently accessible guide to the monuments at Bagan is available in Stadtner, Donald M., Ancient Pagan: Buddhist Plain of Merit (River Books, Bangkok, 2013.)
