Anawrahta

Burmese history becomes firmly datable with Anawrahta, who seized the throne of Pagan in 1044 and spent the next three decades turning a small kingdom in the dry heart of Upper Burma into the first empire to unite the Irrawaddy valley. Revered as the founder of the Burmese nation, he also made Theravada Buddhism the faith of his court, dug irrigation works that fed Pagan for centuries and began the great age of temple building there.

Born Min Saw on 11 May 1014, according to the dates scholars generally accept, he was a son of King Kunhsaw Kyaunghpyu of Pagan. In 1021 his father was overthrown by two stepsons, Kyiso and Sokkate, and sent to live as a monk; the boy grew up at court in their shadow. In 1044, according to the chronicles angered that Sokkate had taken his mother as a queen, Min Saw rebelled at Mount Popa and challenged the king to single combat, killing him on 11 August near Pagan. After his father, still a monk, declined the crown, he was enthroned in December 1044 as Anawrahta, a Burmese form of the Sanskrit name Aniruddha.

His kingdom was then only some 200 miles long. Anawrahta assessed every town and village for taxes and levies, repaired Meiktila Lake and built weirs and canals on the Panlaung and Zawgyi rivers, turning the Kyaukse plain into Upper Burma's rice bowl. His army was led by four famous commanders, the "Four Paladins", among them his son Kyansittha.

From the 1050s he expanded. He received tribute from the Shan hills and secured them with dozens of forts, and the ruler of Pegu submitted. When the Mon kingdom of Thaton refused, his armies besieged it for three months and took it on 17 May 1057. Tradition says he wanted Thaton's Buddhist scriptures and carried off more than 30,000 people, including the artisans who built Pagan's temples, though the historian Michael Aung-Thwin argues that Thaton's influence is a later legend. Anawrahta then raided northern Arakan and, according to the chronicles, marched to the Dali kingdom to the north-east, returning with a jade image. He also turned back an advance by the Khmer Empire into the Tenasserim coast, leaving the Pagan Kingdom one of the two leading states of mainland South-East Asia.

Around 1056 a Mon monk, Shin Arahan, converted Anawrahta from the local Ari form of Buddhism to Theravada. The king broke the power of the Ari monks, whom he regarded as corrupt, and drove many into exile, while allowing the old nat spirits into Buddhist shrines to draw people to the new faith. He invited scholars from the Mon country, India and Ceylon. When King Vijayabahu I of Ceylon fought invaders from the Chola dynasty, Anawrahta sent supplies in 1069 and later monks and scriptures, helping revive the monastic order of Sri Lanka. The change was gradual: Theravada took centuries to spread through the countryside, and Ari monks and nat worship survived. He began the Shwezigon Pagoda in 1059; it was still unfinished at his death. The belief that he commissioned the Burmese alphabet is now doubted, since the script was in use by 1035.

Anawrahta died near Pagan on 11 April 1077. The chronicles say a spirit in the form of a wild buffalo gored him, which may hint that enemies ambushed him. The historian Htin Aung wrote that his subjects admired and feared him but did not love him. His successors built on his administration, and Pagan dominated the Irrawaddy valley for some 250 years.

Our 1100 map shows the Pagan Kingdom shortly after his reign, covering much of modern Myanmar, with the Khmer Empire to the east.