Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c42.10

c42.10

With the production of these earlier structures the stage began to be set for that remarkable display of religious building in Middle Burma which has been referred to as representing the Classical Period of the architecture of the country. The sacred structure comprising this great group are Buddhist of the Hinayana order, and are all found on one site, at Pagan, the capital of Burma from 819 A D, at which date it was founded, until 1286 when it fell, owing to invasion, and ceased to be the leading city of the state. Here, in this expansive but arid locality, the excessively dry climatic conditions being the main reason for their preservation, there grew up within a period of four centuries such an immense concourse of religious buildings that in number and size it can have few equals. This vast temple city, deserted in the thirteenth century, and ever since remaining a mere empty embodiment of its one time glory, must have consisted, when in its prime, of nearly a thousand "pagodas" of note, and which even now boasts of some eight hundred of these edifices, more than a few being monuments of exceptional proportions. Glistening brilliantly white in the searing sunlight, distributed over an area eight miles by five of bare and uninteresting landscape, these stupas and temples, bereft now largely of their spiritual content and priestly establishment, are a record of a time when Buddhism was foremost in the minds of the people, a condition which found expression in architecture of a grand order.