Bagan Myinkaba Village Cultural Heritage: Past and Present | ပုဂံ မြင်းကပါရွာရှိရှေးယခင်နှင့် ယနေ့ခေတ် ယဉ်ကျေးမှု အမွေအနှစ်များ

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26721/spafajournal.5gpkq39o0x

Keywords:

Lacquer, Manuha, Mon, Water management

Abstract

The life of Bagan speaks through its villages, from the founding set of nineteen some two thousand years ago, until today. This formative role of villages, however, has been side-lined by the fame of Bagan as the centre of a great Buddhist empire. The present article focuses on one village, Myinkaba. The location, its history, tangible and intangible characteristics underpin an evolving community of trade, production and religious patronage. Other villages at Bagan likewise have developed their own personalities making this analysis a proposal and potential template for bringing a new perspective to dynamics of the ancient city and its sustainable future. Like all the villages of Bagan, Myinkaba’s culture is Buddhist yet mixed with animist and other elements from the interaction of Pyu, Bamar and Mon groups over many centuries. Of the capital’s nineteen ‘founding’ villages, Myinkaba is the only one anchored on a large seasonal water body or in-gyi. The prime location on the Ayeyarawady River has enabled trade in bamboo used for lacquer and other products over many centuries. The site also contains evidence of glass production and smelting in a series of kilns. Festivals earn income for the temples, with sale of traditional snacks and a puppet competition. Inscriptions and historical links with the ‘captured’ eleventh century ruler of Thaton, King Manuha, add associations to Mon areas of Lower Myanmar. We construct a working model to encourage further village-based excavation, related research and education in future years that may also contribute to the sustenance of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Bagan.

 

ကျေးရွာများသည် ပုဂံ၏ သမိုင်းတင်ခေတ်ဆိုင်ရာ ရှေးဟောင်းသုတေသနပညာအတွက် အရေးပါသည့်ကဏ္ဍမှ ပါဝင်သည်။ သို့သော် ပုဂံ၏ ထူးကဲသည့် အနုဗိသုကာဆိုင်ရာ လေ့လာမှုများနှင့် ယှဉ်သော် ရပ်ကျေး ရွာကျေးများအား လေ့လာမှု အလွန်နည်းပါးပါသေးသည်။ ဤစာတမ်း၌ မြင်းကပါရွာ၏ ဒြပ်ရှိ ဒြပ်မဲ့ အမွေအနှစ်များနှင့်တကွ သဘာဝရင်းမြစ်များအား အတူလွှမ်းခြုံလေ့လာ၍ သုတေသနကွင်းဆက်များအား ရည်ညွှန်းတင်ပြသွားပါမည်။ မြင်းကပါရွာသည် ပုဂံမြို့တော်၏ မူလ ၁၉ ရွာ အနက် အစဦ်အလာ ပုဂံမြို့တည်သမိုင်း၊ ကျောက်စာ၊ ဖန်ချက်လုပ်ငန်း၊ တည်ရှိနေဆဲဖြစ်သည့် ယွန်းလက်မှုအမွေအနှစ်တို့အရ မွန်နှင့် ဆက်နွယ်သည့် တစ်ခုတည်းသောရွာဖြစ်သည်ကိုသက်သေထူနေသည်။ကျောက်စာအထောက်အထားများက ၎င်းရွာ၏ ရင်းမြစ်ကြွယ်ဝမှုနှင့် အရေးပါမှုကို မီးမောင်းထိုးပြနေပါသည်။ ပထမထောင်စုနှစ်မှသည် ယခုကာလထိ ကူးသန်းရောင်းဝယ်ရေးသည် သာသန အနုဂ္ဂဟများအား တွန်းအားဖြစ်စေသည့်အချက် ၁၁ ရာစုကတည်းကတည်ရှိခဲ့သော ဘုရားစေတီအများအပြား၌ သာမက ယနေ့ခေတ် လူမှုအဖွဲ့အစည်းများ ကြောထောက်နောက်ခံပြုသည့် ဘုရားပွဲများ၌လည်း တွေ့မြင်နိုင်သည်။ မြင်းကပါ၏ ရှေးဟောင်အမွေအနှစ်နှင့် ရှင်သန်ဆဲ အမွေအနှစ်တို့သည် ရပ်ရွာ အဏု-ဒေသများ၏ ဒေသိယ ကိုယ်ပိုင်လူမှုလက္ခဏာ နှင့် ယဉ်ကျေးမှုတို့၏ အခန်းကဏ္ဍကိုသာမက ယူနက်စကို ကမ္ဘာ့အမွေအနှစ် နေရာ ရည်ရှည်တည့်တံ့ရေး စီမံခန့်ခွဲမှု၌ ၎င်းတို့၏ အရေးပါမှု ကိုလည်း မီးမောင်းထိုးပြနေသည်။

Author Biographies

Elizabeth H. Moore, SOAS University of London

Professor Emeritus of Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology

Research Associate, ISEAS, Yusof-Ishak Institute, Singapore

In-Region Liaison Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme (SAAAP) SOAS

Theint Theint Aung, Independent Scholar, Alphawood Alumni, SOAS University of London

 Theint Theint Aung is an Independent Scholar and  SOAS Alphawood Alumni. She is also a lacquer artist, owner of Laksharas- Art & Lacquer from Bagan

[https://www.facebook.com/chezkhinmakyi?__cft__[0]=AZVvHBlnkymFSt3BkoZm7wdYCGWmtWD-ZuHHsyGlWA5WBqgnX9OAsp2xlRhL4E0HTyLh-HNprEG4sOodUMIaeG-jVgKFIoHN5ovosJhj_E3veRbBST9l4aDJ7obBf8grWB8_UKttct7PSzGmoGKRkGjf&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R]

Hninn Wut Yee Latt, Independent Scholar, Alphawood Alumni, SOAS University of London

Ms Hninn Wut Yee Latt is an Independent Scholar based in Yangon, Myanmar. She is a SOAS Alphawood Alumni with a particular interest in Buddhist iconography.

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Looking north from the Myinkaba In-gyi and Mango Tree in the foreground to the curve of the Ayeyarwady River. The tree has been cared for by several generations with the species (Damouk yo thi (ဓမောက်ရိုးသီး) only growing in Myinkaba. Source: Photo by U Win Kyaing (2020).

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Published

2024-07-06

How to Cite

Moore, E. H., Aung, T. T. . and Latt, H. W. Y. (2024) “Bagan Myinkaba Village Cultural Heritage: Past and Present | ပုဂံ မြင်းကပါရွာရှိရှေးယခင်နှင့် ယနေ့ခေတ် ယဉ်ကျေးမှု အမွေအနှစ်များ”, SPAFA Journal, 8, pp. 86–113. doi: 10.26721/spafajournal.5gpkq39o0x.

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Research Articles