Ahura

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.

BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY IN MYANMAR

Archaeology in Myanmar owes its origins to an official visit to the province in 1901 by Lord Curzon (1859-1925), Viceroy of India. Noted for his support of the Archaeological Survey of India, and possessing a personal interest in historic preservation, Curzon was appalled at the sorry state of the Mandalay Palace following the annexation of Myanmar in 1886. He promptly issued detailed orders for the maintenance, custody, and restoration of a number of the most important buildings and decreed that the British Upper Burma Club and Christian churches located within the palace area were to find new premises. The Archaeological Survey of Burma, founded in 1902, was administered by the Archaeological Survey of India, whose annual publications included reports that covered Myanmar. The initial interest focused on epigraphy. As primary sources providing key information on Myanmar's history, a large number of inscriptions urgently needed to be read, catalogued, and preserved in a safe environment. Looting of sites was also a problem-one that continues to this day and compounds the difficulties of provenance and dating for many Myanmar art objects.

The first director of the survey was Emil Forchammer (1851-1890), a Pali scholar and epigraphist who earlier had written on Myanmar law and the antiquities of the Rakhine state. He was succeeded by Taw Sein Ko (1864-1930), a civil servant of Sino-Bamar descent, who during a distinguished career often served as an interlocutor between the people of Myanmar and those of the colonial administration. Earlier, in 1893, as Assistant Secretary of Burma, he had toured the Mon areas and on his return advocated the preservation of the Mon artifacts in museums such as the Phayre Museum in Rangoon. As Director of Archaeology, Taw Sein Ko also opened Myanmar's first archaeological museum in a small building adjacent to Pagan's Ananda Temple in 1904 to display stone inscriptions and sculpture. He was succeeded as director by Charles Duroiselle (1871-1951), a noted Pali scholar and epigrapher, who also published monographs on the Mandalay Palace and jataka tiles at the Hpetleik Stupas among other subjects. Lu Pe Win (1919-1958), Duroiselle's successor in 1940, occupied the position for the remainder of the colonial period.

On March 29, 1910, a quartet of talented individuals, all of whom were to make outstanding contributions, founded the Burma Research Society. Gordon H. Luce (1889-1979), a former member of the Bloomsbury group, served as lecturer in English literature at Government College, Rangoon. He devoted the remainder of his life to a study of Myanmar's history and languages, and to the history of Pagan. Pe Maung Tin (1888-1973) was a Pali scholar who, with Luce, translated a key Myanmar text, The Glass Palace Chronicle. J. S. Furnivall (1878-1960) later became famous for his writ- ings on colonial policies, while J. A. Stewart (1882-1948) became a Myanmar language expert and also compiled a Myanmar-English dictionary. He later became Professor of Myanmar language at London University and one of the founders of its Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
The Burma Research Society provided a forum for the "investigation of literature and the encouragement of art, science, and literature in relation to Burma and neighboring countries." It held regular meetings where, uniquely in its day, local Myanmar people and foreigners met as equals. Academic papers on a wide variety of topics were presented and published in the Journal of the Burma Research Society. Apart from during the period of Japanese occupation, the journal was published regularly from 1911 until 1977, when it was abruptly shuttered by Myanmar's president, Ne Win.

THE BIRTH OF COLLECTING MYANMAR ART IN THE WEST

Colonial policies did little to encourage the continuation of small-scale "native manufacturing," which had previously supplied the entire population with basic necessities such as cloth, ceramics, and tools. Myanmar's crafts were often criticized by so-called visiting experts for their "lack of finish" compared with Chinese and Japanese work. Myanmar artistic forms were on occasion even considered "barbaric" and designs "finicky." An earnest desire to improve native handicrafts led to exhibitions of arts and industries held regularly throughout India and also in Rangoon, or Yangon. Despite the perceived shortcomings, Myanmar lacquer artisans, woodcarvers, and silversmiths received many prizes. At imperial and international expositions held during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, beautifully carved Myanmar wooden pavilions brimming with a wealth of products and attractive crafts were always a favorite with visitors.

Among the most outstanding objects in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection of Myanmar art are purchased from the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, a popular event in London that showcased the glories of empire and introduced Myanmar, the empire's newest possession, to the British public." Not surprisingly, over the years the British Library, the British Museum, and many provincial museums in the United Kingdom have amassed good collections of Myanmar art, much of it donated by former colonial administrators and their heirs. Prior to World War I, a number of German specialists worked for the colonial administration in Myanmar and as a result a few German ethnographic museums also have impressive collections of Myanmar art. In the United States, initial interest in Myanmar came largely through missionary endeavors. The Myanmar art collection at Denison University, Granville, Ohio, was begun in the 1960s with donations of ethnic costumes and other artifacts from former missionary families in the U.S. Midwest.14 The other notable Myanmar art collec- tion in the United States is that of the Burma Studies Foun- dation at Northern Illinois University, De Kalb. Established in the mid-1980s with a donation of Myanmar Buddhist art from Konrad and Sarah Bekker, the collection today consists of a wide range of secular and sacred objects.

INDEPENDENCE AND BEYOND

Upon Myanmar's independence in 1948, the new leaders who felt that their way of life had been eclipsed by an alien regime wasted no time in reasserting the primacy of Myanmar and Buddhist culture. In addition to encouraging the wearing of national dress, Myanmar was made the national language, and the newly established Sarpay Beikman (Burma Translation Society) set about translating western writings on technological and scientific subjects into Myanmar language; this culminated more than twenty years later in the publication of a fifteen-volume Encyclopaedia Birmanica in Myanmar, paradoxically issued with a Latin title. The Ministry of Union Culture, formed in April 1952, established the Cultural Institute in Jubilee Hall and gave it the responsibility of developing and maintaining the National Library (the former Bernard Free Library), the National Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and State School for Fine Arts and Music, Drama and Dancing. At various times since indepen- dence, the Ministry of Culture has undergone reorganization according to changing government directives.

During the Ne Win era (1962 until the mid-1980s), Myanmar was virtually cut off from the outside world. By contrast, neighboring, newly independent nations, anxious to join the international community, proudly held exhibitions and promoted cultural exchange to make their art and commercial products better known. Sadly, during this period Myanmar art came to be known largely through examples smuggled out of the country for sale and a burgeoning reproduction industry, which flooded the art market with replicas.

Despite a lack of funding and trained personnel, the Department of Archaeology has performed surveys and excavations throughout the country since independence. Since 1970, priority has been given to conservation and restoration, especially following the Pagan earthquake in 1975 where damage was repaired under UNESCO guidance. Since the 1990s the government has ordered the Department of Archaeology to reconstruct former palaces and to refurbish many monuments at Pagana policy that has created much consternation and controversy both locally and abroad. Large new museums have been opened at Yangon (1996) and Pagan (1998), to display a wide range of objects, and a school of archaeology was founded in 1995.

Recent changes in Myanmar may, it is hoped, herald the dawn of a new era where through open communication, cultural exchange, and further joint research projects the world may once again come to appreciate the achievements and the distinctive cultural identity found in the Buddhist art of Myanmar that inspired this exhibition and catalogue.