Page 132 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

130 The DelTa anD wesTern MyanMar Mrauk u and around
have stored more than a handful of books. The building was commissioned by King
Min Phalaung in 1591 to house a set of the Buddhist Tripitaka, and is unusual in
being constructed of solid stone rather than the usual brick. It’s elaborately decorated
with abstract geometrical shapes, a fancy door and a spiky zigzag roof in four tiers,
which is now sagging slightly under its own weight. The tiny vaulted interior is
contrastingly bare.
2 Eastern group
Mrauk U’s eastern group of monuments is rather more scattered and low-key than the
northern group, barring the massive Kothaung Paya, one of the town’s stand-out sights.
Many date from the kingdom’s middle years and include a trio of fine stupas – at the
Mong Khong Shwetu, Sakyaman Aung and Ratanaman temples – exemplifying Mrauk
U’s later and lighter architectural style.

Phra Ouk and Mong Khong Shwetu
/ • Daily 24hr • Entry covered by main temple ticket
Set atop a small hillock next to the road, the pint-sized Phra Ouk Paya is said to have
been erected as a talisman by King Phalaung in 1571 when warned of external
threats against his kingdom. The building comprises an unusually shaped, angular
brick stupa-shrine, with a disproportionately large stone doorway (probably a later
addition) and a chain of Buddhas set in niches around the base, looking out in all
directions over the surrounding countryside, perhaps in order to face off
approaching invaders.
The Mong Khong Shwetu Paya (1629) on the opposite side of the road is a good
example of Mrauk U’s later style, with a tall and elegant sandstone stupa (although
parts of the stonework are beginning to sag with age) topped with a distinctive
star-shaped finial and finely carved double niches arranged around each of its
four sides.
Pizidaung Paya
• Daily 24hr • Entry covered by main temple ticket
The Pizidaung Paya is said to contain a testicle (pizi) relic of the Buddha – although
this sounds suspiciously like another Burmese cock-and-bull story, and the site’s main
attraction is its gorgeous view of the nearby Kothaung Paya. There’s not much left of
the temple itself, situated on a hillock right next to the road junction but surprisingly
easy to miss. Much of the shrine has collapsed, leaving one Buddha sitting lone and
proud at the top of the hill, with four more Buddhas seated in the remains of the
ambulatory below, also now open to the sky.
Kothaung Paya
• Daily 7am–5.30pm • Entry covered by main temple ticket
Built between 1554 and 1556, the gigantic Kothaung Paya is the result of a piece of
shameless one-upmanship by King Dikkha, who ordered a building large enough to
store 90,000 (kothaung) Buddha images – just that little bit bigger than his father
King Minbin’s landmark temple, which could hold just 80,000 (shittaung).
Dikkha’s vainglory did him little good: he reigned for just three years and his vast
temple fell rapidly to pieces (its marshy location causing the foundations to subside)
and had to be meticulously put back together again in a massive restoration
programme starting in 1997.
Even by Mrauk U’s outlandish standards it’s a singularly strange structure, looking
like some kind of huge Buddhist bomb shelter, its stepped sides stacked with hundreds
of mini-stupas. There’s nothing else like it in Myanmar, although it does bear a certain
(probably fortuitous) resemblance to the great stupa-mountain of Borobudur in Java.

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