Mingun Pahtodawgyi Buddhist Stupa, Myanmar (Burma)

Address

Mingun Pahtodawgyi Buddhist Stupa, Myanmar (Burma)

Myanmar (Burma)

Moolavar

Buddha

Introduction

Mingun Pahtodawgyi is an incomplete monument stupa in Mingun, approximately 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) northwest of Mandalay in Sagaing Region in central Myanmar (formerly Burma). The ruins are the remains of a massive construction project begun by King Bodawpaya in 1790 which was intentionally left unfinished. The Pahtodawgyi is seen as the physical manifestation of Bodawpaya’s well-known eccentricities. He set up an observation post on an island off Mingun to personally supervise the construction of the temple.

Puranic Significance

The Mingun Pahtodawgyi is an enormous “unfinished” pagoda, the kingdom’s capital at the time of its construction. It was conceived by King Bodawpaya of the Konbaung Dynasty (r. 1782-1819) who initiated construction in 1790 to house relics of the Buddha including a tooth replica obtained from China. There is some doubt as to whether the pagoda was ever completed, as the structure was riven by a series of earthquakes beginning in 1821, and more disastrously, in 1839. Now covered in cracks, the abandoned monument attracts only limited use as a place of worship, though in terms of scale it outclasses every other monument in Myanmar, before or after.

According to legend, illustrious sovereigns of the past such as King Anawrahta of Pagan (r. 1044 to 1077) had waged campaigns to take the image, but failed because prophesy foretold that only the Buddha of the Future, Maitreya, would be able to carry off such a task. Now having achieved such an ‘impossible’ victory, Bodawpaya began openly describe himself as the living incarnation of Matreiya.

By any standards, the pagoda is quite large. It measures about 70 meters on each side and rises about 50 meters, containing a volume of about 250,000 cubic meters (roughly 1/10th the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza). Starter notes that the pagoda is solid and each of its bricks is approximately 45 centimeters in length. If we assume roughly 100 bricks per meter, this amounts to about 25 million bricks in the entire structure. Such prodigious quantities of masonry required the labor of perhaps 10,000 men working over a period of 20 years, and resulted in frequent forays for raw materials such as bamboo and firewood. The King himself took considerable personal interest in the project, even establishing a temporary palace to oversee construction (a practice fairly common throughout the region; for instance, King Thai Si of Ayutthaya built the Tamnak Maheyong, a temporary residence, while overseeing work at Wat Maheyong, a Buddhist monastery, in the early 1700s).

The pagoda’s architects appear to have recognized the monument’s vulnerability to earthquakes though there was little they could do to mitigate the risk. One attempted innovation was to wrap the facades in a series of chains hidden beneath thin coats of plaster. These were probably meant to hold the pagoda together in the event of a minor tremor. Though the idea is sound (a similar technique is used by conservators in Bagan, who wrapped certain monuments such as the Nga-kywe-na-daung Stupa in bands of steel) the effort was totally ineffective: even the strongest chains are inherently flawed, as the failure of a single link results in the loss of tension throughout the chain. When the main tremor hit on March 23, 1839, the chains appear to have failed en masse. One can still see the ends of many broken chains dangling from the facades.

The pagoda was planned as part of a small ensemble of monuments leading from the riverbank, as the usual approach to Mingun from Amarapura was—then as now—by boat or barge. Along the left bank of the Irrawaddy was a small chapel called the Settawya Pagoda which housed a “footprint” of the Buddha. It was built by Bowdawpaya from 1804 to 1811. Immediately to the north, and on-axis with the east face of the Pahtodawgyi, were a pair of chinthe (lions) that flanked the entrance to the pagoda. These huge statues must have been intimidating when completed, but unfortunately they too fell victim to the earthquake of 1839. Now broken, only their hindquarters remain to attest to their once mighty size.