By rising through the Forest Mist at dawn, with arrows reaching more than 200 feet, few sites on earth impressed travelers like the temples and the Pagods of Bagan. “Jerusalem, Rome, kyiv, Benares,” wrote Scottish journalist and colonial administrator James George Scott in 1910, “none of them can boast of the multitude of temples and the sumptuousness of design and ornament”.
Lying near the large sagaing flaw in the center of Myanmar, the Buddhist monuments of the 12th century 200 -year -old have long been sensitive to seismic events. “The last earthquake in 2016 caused considerable damage to key monuments,” said Dr. Stephen Murphy, lecturer in Asian art at Soas University in London. He added that it was not clear if the earthquake on Friday had caused a similar scale of damage.
The stupas and temples were built on the banks of the Irrawaddy river by the first unified Burmese kingdom and one of the largest Buddhist civilizations in the world.
The founder of Bagan, Anawrahta Minsaw, started with a unique heroic fight against his brother-in-law around 1044, continuing to conquer the surrounding nations. A legend, recorded on the registrations in Bagan, is that he has brought 30,000 prisoners qualified in sculpture, painting, masonry and many other useful skills, including “cunning men in perfumes, odors, flowers and flower juices”.
The cultural effect was deep: more than 10,000 religious sanctuaries would have been built, much decorated with complex details which survived the earthquakes and restorations badly judged by the military junta in the 1990s.
Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019, the city has suffered from political and violence unrest. Foreign tourism has dropped over the past 20 years by around 200,000 to a few thousand visitors. “We have taken many visitors until 2017,” said Marc Leaderman in the travel company Wild Frontiers. “It is a site comparable to Angkor Wat and we are obviously deeply saddened for the inhabitants of Myanmar and Thailand.”
The site has remained extremely important for local populations with more than 400,000 visits in 2023. Ashley Thompson, art teacher from Southeast Asia in Soas, said: “For populations subjected to supported political violence in recent decades, the Bagan lights offer previous prosperity can also support hope, even if its Buddhist symbolism can be instrumental by persons high.
The site also houses a museum housing the Myazedi inscription, a pillar dated 1,113 sometimes called the Rosetta Burmese stone. It carries four ancient languages, including the first known example of the Burma. “Bagan’s potential cultural loss is faced again can pale with regard to loss of lives, but will have a lasting impact on a country where so many people are having trouble surviving,” said Thompson.
