Buddhist Art of Myanmar

This splendid book offers a comprehensive study of Buddhism Art across Burma (now Myanmar), focusing on Pagan (Bagan). To summarize the history of this remarkable site, ​“the city’s formal name was Arimaddanapura, or City of the Crusher of Foes, but was known locally as Pukam, with many variants. In modern times the city came to be alled Pagan, but this was later changed to Bagan, conforming to the government’s system of transliteration. The earliest monuments were built close to the riverbank, but by the second half of the twelfth century construction moved into the plains and further east. In the thirteenth century an explosion of activity resulted in the building of more than two thousand monuments. The size of the city’s ancient population is unknown, since domestic architecture was made of perishable materials. The landscape was probably similar to its appearance today, with clusters of monuments surrounded by fields and villages.”

Regarding the ethnography of Ancient Burma, the authors write: ​“The majority of inhabitants most likely spoke Mon, a language belonging to the Mon-Khmer subfamily of the Austro-Asiatic family. The Mon in Myanmar were probably related linguistically and ethnically to the Dvaravati Mon in Thailand, but features most characteristic of Dvaravati art, such as stone wheels atop pillars, are not found in Myanmar. No names of early Mon kings or dated inscriptions have come to light from the first millennium in Myanmar, and evidence proving any formal connections among the Mon, the Pyu, and the Dvaravati Mon is unavailable.”