Sylvia Fraser-Lu and Donald M. Stadtner
Myanmar is one of the most ethnically diverse countries on earth. Today the nation is home to 135 officially recognized ethnic groups, each with its own distinctive way of life, language, and adherence to a variety of beliefs including Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and animism. Our decision to present an exhibition with a focus on Myanmar's Buddhist art stemmed from its long and continuous presence in the country. Even to this day nearly ninety percent of the population are devout followers of the Theravada Buddhist faith. Adherents include the Bamar ethnic majority, the Shan, Rakhine, and Mon, who collectively comprise around eighty-five percent of the present-day population. This catalogue and exhibition provide a starting point from which to begin a deeper appreciation of Myanmar's unique Buddhist culture and to stimulate further exploration of the country's rich and extraordinary diversity.
In June 1795, a freshly captured white elephant was sent upriver to Pagan, the ancient capital since the beginning of the second millennium. Descending on the Irrawaddy River was King Bodawpaya (r.1782-1819), who took possession of the elephant amid great pageantry on June 23. Indeed, an albino elephant in the royal stable was an indispensable symbol of kingship in Buddhist Southeast Asia. Nearly a thousand years earlier, another white elephant had participated in the consecration of a king's palace at Pagan, or Bagan. Today, white elephants on public view in Yangon and the new capital, Naypyidaw, are tethered not by kings but by the Myanmar government. However, such symbolism, extending over a millennium, is a reminder that the past inescapably envelops the present in Myanmar and that the secular and Buddhist worlds blend effortlessly. A BRIEF HISTORY The Myanmar-speaking people of today are descendants of those who came down onto the plains of Upper Myanmar toward the close of the first millennium CE, probably from Yunnan, China. The Myanmar were therefore originally out- siders to the region in much the same way that the Thai immigrated to Thailand by the thirteenth century from southern China. These newcomers, in both Myanmar and Thailand, gained ascendancy over earlier inhabitants whose diverse regional and ethnic traditions were forged together over centuries into a modern nation. This is not to say that Myanmar was born from a single cloth. The country is in fact more like a quilt, patched together in comparatively recent times from pieces still retaining much of their original character. To appreciate the interaction of diverse peoples one has only to think of the European settlement of the New World.
Myanmar participated in the remarkable rise of civilization that swept the entire mainland of Southeast Asia in the first millennium, seeded by influences mainly from India. Within the country's present-day borders, three major regional centers emerged at approximately the same time, each flourishing after the middle of the first millennium. All three regions put up huge brick-walled cities, and each minted distinct coin series, underscoring the independent nature of these polities.
Of these three regional groups, the Pyu people, who inhabited Upper Myanmar from the middle to nearly the end of the first millennium, have left the most artifacts and so have furnished the majority of the earliest objects included in this exhibition and its catalogue. Lower Myanmar was in the hands of the Mon throughout the first millennium, and its remains are far fewer but of equal quality. Western Myanmar, or Rakhine state, enjoyed no less rich history. Northeastern Myanmar has never been properly investigated, but by the fourteenth century Shan speakers descended into this region from Yunnan. The vast hill tracts surrounding Myanmar's modern borders have probably been inhabited by numerous smaller ethnic groups since the first millennium, as they are today.
Buddhism and Hinduism arrived in Myanmar from India in the first millennium, together with various Indian scripts that were soon adapted for the indigenous Pyu and Mon languages. These influences most probably were transmitted not through conquest or colonization but by Indian traders and priests; Sri Lanka also likely played a role, as a fountainhead of Theravada Buddhism. Each of the regions of Myanmar, however, developed a distinctive flavor of Buddhism.
The Pyu were largely eclipsed toward the close of the first millennium, if not earlier, but reasons for their decline are uncertain. The Mon continued to flourish in Lower Myanmar, and their culture contributed to the formation of Pagan, whose roots took hold by the eleventh century. Pagan has been called the country's first capital, since Myanmar-speaking people controlled much of what encompasses the country today; Pagan's "classic age" spanned the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Although Rakhine was never subject to Pagan's political orbit, it experienced no less of an awakening by the middle of the second millennium.
Pagan was replaced as the capital in the fourteenth century by Ava, or Inwa, near modern Mandalay. The Mon continued to rule in Lower Myanmar, with their center in Pegu, or Bago, but by the sixteenth century the Mon succumbed to Myanmar forces from the north. In Rakhine a separate dynasty arose in the fifteenth century, with Mrauk-U as its capital. Shan speakers inhabited northeastern Myanmar and formed numerous small kingdoms, most of which became subject to Myanmar control over the centuries.
A collective sense of Myanmar, as we know it now, took many centuries to build, beginning in earnest in the Konbaung Period (1752-1885) and accelerating greatly in the English colonial period, which was marked by three wars in the course of the nineteenth century. However, it was not until the fall of Mandalay in 1885 that the entire country fell to British rule, and it was annexed in the following year. During the colonial era, Chinese and Indian immigration was encouraged, and these communities now form significant minorities, especially in urban populations. The Indians were largely Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Religious, regional, and ethnic conflicts have continued to come to the fore since independence in 1948, but conflicts are now framed within the context of a modern state.
L'art (6)