Journal of Archaeology and Fine Arts in Southeast Asia
Published by the SEAMEO Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts (SPAFA)
Open Access http://www.spafajournal.org
Water, Ritual, and Prosperity at the Classical Capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th Centuries CE): Archaeological Exploration of the Tuyin- Thetso “Water Mountain” and the Nat Yekan Sacred Water Tank
၁၁ မွ ၁၄ရာစ ◌ျမ ာ့ ဂႏ◌ၲဝင ဂံေ◌ခတ္၏ ေ◌ရအသံ◌ ◌းခ်မႈ၊ ႐ိ းရာေဓလ့ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ - သာယာေဝ◌ျပာမႈ အ ထတ မတ ားရာ နတ္ေ◌ရကန္ ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့တ ရင က ိ းေ◌တာင္
ေ◌ရအသံ◌ ◌းခ်မႈဆိ င ာ ေ◌ရွးေ◌ဟာင္◌းသ ေ◌တသန စ းစမ္◌းရွာေ◌ြဖ◌ျခင္◌း
1 2 Gyles Iannone , Pyiet Phyo Kyaw , Scott Received October 31, 2018 Macrae3, Nyein Chan Soe4, Saw Tun Lin5, Accepted November 14, 2018 Kong F. Cheong6 Published January 23, 2019 DOI: 1Professor, Trent University, Peterborough, http://dx.doi.org/10.26721/spafajournal.v3i0.600 Canada. [email protected] 2Lecturer, University of Mandalay, Copyright: Mandalay, Myanmar. [email protected] @2019 SEAMEO SPAFA and author. 3 This is an open-access article distributed under Adjunct Professor, Trent University, the terms of the Creative Commons 4.0 Peterborough, Canada. [email protected] Attribution Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4Assistant Lecturer, Yadanabon University, License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits Mandalay, Myanmar. copying, distribution and reproduction in any [email protected] medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 5Assistant Lecturer, University of Yangon, Yangon, Myanmar. [email protected] 6Graduate Student, American University, Washington DC, USA. [email protected] Journal Vol 3 (2019) Water, Ritual, and Prosperity at the Classical Capital of Bagan, Myanmar
Abstract The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices and water management at the Classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th centuries CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated in the Tuyin-Thetso uplands, located 11 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This mountainous area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, given that it was one of five places around the city that a royal white elephant carrying a Buddhist tooth-relic kneeled down, prompting King Anawrahta (1044- 1077 CE) to build a pagoda (i.e., temple) there. Numerous 13th century religious monuments were subsequently built on the Tuyin Range. Recent explorations in these uplands have drawn attention to an additional feature of historical significance, a rock-cut tank located along the eastern edge of the Thetso-Taung ridge. Referred to by local villagers as Nat Yekan (Spirit Lake), this reservoir appears to have been integral not only to the initial collection and subsequent redistribution of water across the Bagan plain via a series of interconnected canals and reservoirs, but also, through its associated iconographic imagery, it may have been intended to symbolically purify this water, enhancing its fertility prior to its flowing into the city’s peri-urban zone. Hydrological modelling, excavations, and both iconographic and epigraphic analysis are used to build a multilayered understanding of Nat Yekan’s economic, political, religious, and ideological significance during Bagan’s Classical era.
Keywords: Myanmar, Bagan, Water, Ritual, Ideology
IRAW Bagan စီမံကိန္◌းသည္ ၁၁ရာစ မွ ၁၄ရာစ အ တင္◌း စ ငန ္◌းကားခဲ့ေ◌သာ
◌ျမ ာတိ ႔၏ ပ ဂံႏ◌ိ◌ င ံေ◌တာ◌္ တင္ ဘက္ေ◌ပါင္◌းစံ◌ ေ◌ပါင္◌းစည္◌းထားေ◌သာ လ မႈ
ေ◌ဂဟ သမိ င္◌းေ◌ၾကာင္◌း◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ လ ေ◌နထိ င ႈပံ◌ စံ၊ စိ က ် ိ ဳးေ◌ရး ေဓလ့စ႐ိ က ်ား
◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌ရအရင္◌းအျမစ သံ◌ ◌းခ်မႈမ်ားအား ◌ျပ ည္ေ◌ဖာ◌္ထ တ န္
အဓိကရ ယ ါသည္။ အဆိ ပါ ေ◌ရရွည္ သ ေ◌တသန စီမံကိန္◌း ေ◌လ့လာေ◌ရးအား
ဗဟိ အခ်က ခ်ာ◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ ပ ဂံၿမိ ဳေ႕ဟာင္◌း၏ ေအရွေ႕တာင က္ ၁၁ကီလိ မီတာ
ေ◌ဝး ကာေ◌သာ တ ရင္ ◌ႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ သက ိ းေ◌တာင္ ဧရိယာမွ စတင ပ္ေ◌ဆာငပ ဲ ့ ါသည္။ ( - AD) ေ၎တာင န္◌းဧရိယာသည္ ပ ဂံရာဇဝ င င္ ေအနာ◌္ရထာမင္◌းႀကီး ၁၀၄၄ ၁၀၇၇
အဓိဠာန္◌ျပဳ၍ လႊတ ိ က္ေ◌သာ ဗ ဒၶျမ တ ယ္ေ◌တာ◌္ တင္ေ◌ဆာင ည္◌ ့
ဆင္◌ျဖဴေ◌တာ◌္ကိန္◌းဝပ ာ ငါးေ◌နရာ တင္ တစ အပါအဝင္◌ျဖစ ည္◌ ့
ထငာ း ေအရးပါသည◌္ ့ ေ◌နရာလဲ ◌ျဖစ ါသည္။ မ်ားြစာေ◌သာ ၁၃ရာစ ပ ဂံေ◌ခတ္
သာသနိက ေအဆာက အံ◌ မ်ားလည္◌း တ ရင္ေ◌တာင္ေ◌ၾကာ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာက္
တည္ေ◌ဆာက ား ၾကသည္။ အဆိ ပါေ◌တာင န္◌း တင္ လေက လာ စ းစမ္◌းရွာေ◌ြဖမႈ
သ ည္◌း သမိ င္◌းတ ိ းအရ သာသနိက ေအဆာက အံ◌ မ်ား ကဲ့သိ ႔ေအရးပါေ◌သာ
သက ိ းေ◌တာင္၏ ေအရွ႕ဖက ြစန္◌း တင္ တ ိေ◌ သာ ေ◌က်က္ေ◌ရက ား
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Water, Ritual, and Prosperity at the Classical Capital of Bagan, Myanmar SPAFA Journal Vol 3 (2019)
အထ း◌ျပဳေ◌လ့လာ◌ျခင္◌း◌ျဖစ ည္။ ေ◌ဒသခံ ာသ ာသားမ်ားက ေ၎က်ာက္ေ◌ရက ား
နတ္ေ◌ရက ေ◌ခၚဆိ မႈအရ ေ၎ေရလွာင ကီးသည္ ကနဦး ေ◌ရစ ေ◌ဆာင္◌း
သိ ေ◌လွာင ပီးေ◌နာက္ ပ ဂံ လင္◌ျပင္ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာက ိ ေ◌ေရလွာင ်ား
တ းေ◌◌ျမာင္◌းမ်ားႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ ဆ က ယ္၍ ေ◌ ျပ ည္ ◌ျဖန္ေ႔ေဝပးယံ◌ သာ မကဘဲ