Page 215 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

BAGAN BAGAN AND AROUND 213
Standing directly opposite the Nathlaung Kyaung is the Ngakywenadaung Pagoda, 5
a small, unusually bulbous stupa looking like a miniature version of the nearby Bupaya.
Traces of the green glazed tiles that originally covered it can still be seen.

Thatbyinnyu Paya and around
• Daily 8am–6pm
Dominating the skyline of Old Bagan is the monumental Thatbyinnyu Paya, one of the
largest temples anywhere in Bagan. It’s also the tallest, rising to a height of around
66m, although it’s the sheer mass of the building that really impresses. Built by King
Alaungsithu (ruled 1112–67), the temple marks an important transitional point
between Bagan’s early and late styles. This was Bagan’s first fully fledged “double-cube”
two-storey temple, with the main shrine placed on the upper storey and the traditional
ground-floor shrine replaced with a “solid-core” structure in order to support the extra
weight of the additional storey above. Each of the two storeys is topped with three
terraces (now with flat roofs rather than the pitched lean-to roofs of earlier temples)
and adorned with crenellations and corner stupas. Entrances are placed at each of the
cardinal points – the so-called “four-faced layout” (with a slightly larger eastern
portico) typical of late-period Bagan style and which, unlike earlier temples, often
only had a single entrance. The interior has nice traces of geometrical floral murals
inside the west entrance, but is otherwise disappointingly plain.
On the northeast side of the temple, look out for the small “tally temple” (gayocho).
One brick out of every ten thousand used in the construction of Thatbyinnyu was set
aside for counting purposes and a whitewashed temple was built with the resultant
bricks – the surprising scale of the resultant structure gives a good idea of quite how
many bricks were consumed by the mother temple. Around 100m south of the temple,
you should also look out for the small surviving stretch of Old Bagan’s crumbling city
walls, which offers fine views over the surrounding monuments.
Shwegugyi Paya
• Daily 8am–6pm
Built in 1140 during the reign of Alaungsithu, the Shwegugyi Paya is one of Old
Bagan’s most elegant temples, relatively small but perfectly formed. Like the nearby
Thatbyinnyu, the Shwegugyi exemplifies the transition between Bagan’s weighty
Mon- and Pyu-influenced early style and the lighter, airier and more upwardly mobile
late style, with its graceful curvilinear tower and stupa finials rising needle-like from the
temple’s roof.
Unusually, the main entrance is on the north side (rather than the customary east),
presumably in order to face the nearby royal palace. A large Buddha sits facing the
main entrance, opposite which (on your right as you enter) stands a pair of ancient
Pali inscriptions recording, among other details, the temple’s construction, which it is
claimed took just seven months. Elsewhere traces of fine plasterwork decoration are
still visible, along with three smaller Buddha figures in the ambulatory, roughly caked
in gold leaf applied by dutiful worshippers.

ALAUNGSITHU AND NARATHU
The Shwegugyi Paya stands on an unusually high brick platform. According to one
(particularly implausible) legend, this rose spontaneously from the ground in tribute to
King Alaungsithu’s accumulated spiritual merit prior to the temple’s construction in 1140.
Twenty-three years later, it is said, the elderly and ailing king was brought back to Shwegugyi
and left to die. When the king began showing unwelcome signs of recovering from his illness,
his son and heir-apparent Narathu decided to hasten him on his way by smothering him to
death in his own bedclothes, thereby murdering Alaungsithu in the temple that his own merit
had helped to create. The moral of the story remains unclear.