Pagan Kingdom

The Pagan Kingdom was the first state to unify the Irrawaddy valley, the heartland of what is now Myanmar. From the mid-ninth century to the late thirteenth, its kings ruled from Pagan, today usually spelled Bagan, on the banks of the Irrawaddy, where they and their subjects built more than ten thousand Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries, over two thousand of which survive.

Before Pagan, the Irrawaddy valley was home to the Pyu city-states, such as Sri Ksetra and Halin, which flourished from the first centuries CE and adopted Buddhism, and the Mon kingdoms of the south, such as Thaton. In 832 the Nanzhao kingdom of Yunnan sacked the Pyu cities. Burmese-speaking people, the Bamar, who had migrated from the north, settled in the central dry zone, and founded Pagan, traditionally in 849.

Pagan's expansion began under King Anawrahta, who came to the throne in 1044. He built irrigation works in the Kyaukse district, making the dry zone productive. Around 1057 he conquered the Mon kingdom of Thaton, bringing back its king, monks, scriptures and craftsmen. According to tradition, the Mon monk Shin Arahan converted him to Theravada Buddhism, which Anawrahta made the kingdom's religion, replacing earlier Mahayana and local practices. He also acquired Buddha relics from Sri Lanka.

King Kyansittha, who ruled from 1084 to 1112, built the Ananda temple, one of Bagan's masterpieces, with four standing Buddha statues, and completed the Shwezigon pagoda. The Myazedi inscription of 1113, carved in Pali, Mon, Pyu and Burmese, records the dedication of a temple by Kyansittha's son, and helped scholars decipher the Pyu language. Burmese became a literary language. Under kings such as Alaungsithu and Narapatisithu, Pagan's temple building continued, including the Thatbyinnyu, the tallest, and the Dhammayangyi, the largest.

Kings, nobles and commoners built temples and donated land and labour to monasteries to earn merit for future lives. Pagan became a centre of Theravada Buddhist learning, and its monks maintained close ties with Sri Lanka, from which a reformed Theravada tradition was introduced in the late twelfth century. Temples were decorated with murals of the Buddha's lives and with glazed tiles. The kingdom's population may have reached one or two million.

Over two centuries, kings and others gave so much tax-free land to the monastic order, the sangha, that by the thirteenth century perhaps a large share of the kingdom's farmland was exempt from tax, weakening the crown's revenue and military. Kings tried to reclaim land, with limited success.

In the 1270s Pagan refused to submit to the Mongol Yuan dynasty and attacked a Mongol vassal state. In 1277 the Mongols defeated Pagan's army, with war elephants, at Ngasaunggyan. In 1287 Mongol forces invaded again. King Narathihapate, who had fled south, was poisoned by his son. The kingdom broke apart.

Three Shan brothers took control of central Burma, and the region broke into kingdoms, such as Ava, Pegu and Arakan. Pagan became a small town, but remained a pilgrimage site. Earthquakes, especially in 1975 and 2016, damaged many temples. Bagan was declared a World Heritage Site in 2019.

Our maps show the Pagan Kingdom on the 900 map and from 1279 to 1400. Its largest outline, about 730,000 square kilometres on the 1279 map, is three-quarters in today's Myanmar, with parts in India, China, Thailand and Bangladesh. Yangon's site lies inside it. The maps after 1300 use the name for the region after the kingdom's collapse.