The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s3.48

v4.c23.s3.48

Styling himself the king of kings, he governed only Pegū and the Talaing country directly, leaving the rest of the realm to vassal kings with palaces at Toungoo, Prome, Āva and Chiengmai. He regarded Chiengmai as the most important, having fifty-seven provinces; these, like the thirty-two provinces of Pegū,³ were big villages. Chiengmai was a Shan state, and when he spoke of having twenty-four crowned heads at his command, he was referring to *sawbwas*. Each of the twenty gates of his new city at Pegū was named after the vassal who built it, such as the Prome gate, the Chiengmai gate, the Toungoo gate, the gates of Salin, Dalla, Mohnyin, Tavoy, Hsenwi, Linzin, Tenasserim, Ayuthia, Martaban, Pagan—it was the men of Pagan who had to plant the toddy palms all along the walls and at the street corners. As a model Buddhist king he distributed copies of the scriptures, fed monks, and built pagodas in Chiengmai, Koshanpye and other conquered states. Some of these pagodas are still to be seen, and in later ages the Burmese would point to them as proof of their claim to rule those countries still. He supervised mass ordinations at the Kalyānī *thein*.⁴ Following a royal custom he would break up his crown and use its jewels to adorn the spire of a pagoda; he did this for the Shwedagon, the Shwemawdaw, and the Kyaiktiyo in Thaton district. Again, as at the Shwemawdaw, he would build as many surrounding monasteries as there were years in his life at the time, fifty-two; or he would bear the cost of ordaining a similar number of monks. After the 1564 earthquake, which coincided with his queen’s death, he repaired the Shwedagon, and added a new spire. His chief foundation was the Mahazedi at Pegū, at which he enshrined a begging bowl of supernatural origin sent him in 1567 by some Ceylon kinglet, the Tooth (p. 489) and golden images of himself, the royal family, and such of the great officers of state as were in his inner circle.