Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c42.24

c42.24

With the fall of Pagan in 1286, owing to the invasion of the country by the forces of the Asiatic conqueror Kublai Khan, Burma politically disintegrated and the architectural movement as this flourished in the mediaeval temple city suffered accordingly. The end of the 13th century therefore marks the end also of the grand classical style of the building art of the Burmese, a style which was never revived. Decadent forms of it appear in some of the subsequent capital cities, such as at Mekkhaya, Ava, Sagaing, and Amarapura, but on account of inferior construction most of these structures are crumbling to ruin A considerable interval of separative rule then ensued, to be followed by a period of some four centuries when Burma appears to have turned away from India and to have been directed more towards the Far East for inspiration, its builders thus coming gradually under the influence of Chinese ideals, with the resultant change in their orientation, as exemplified by the recent architecture of the country. From the eighteenth century therefore there developed in the more important centres of Burma a style of architecture in which that distinctive feature commonly referred to as the "pagoda" element is predominant. The principal examples of the phase are the famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda at Rangoon, the Monasteries at Mandalay, as for instance the Queen's Golden Monastery, and more particularly, as it represents the secular architecture of the country at this period, the imperial city and palace at Mandalay