Notas del episodio
Today about 2,200 brick temples, stupas, and monasteries rise from the dry plain of Bagan in Myanmar, but at its peak more than 10,000 monuments stood in about 104 square kilometers. The city was founded in the mid to late ninth century by the Bamar people in the Irrawaddy Valley and flourished between 1044 and 1287 as the capital of a kingdom that unified the region. It drew monks and students from India, Sri Lanka, and the Khmer Empire to study Pali, grammar, medicine, law, and the Abhidhamma. Theravada Buddhism had royal backing, yet Mahayana, tantric, Saivite, and Vaishnava worship thrived beside local nat spirits. Construction peaked between 1150 and 1200, built by a well paid class of artisans that drew immigrants from the Chola Empire and Srivijaya.
Bagan's masons mastered brick vaulting a century before India, but the skill was never written down, and by the 18th century King Bodawpaya's builders could not reproduce it. The traditional story of a Mongol sacking has given way to evidence of an internal shift, as provincial governors kept their taxes and royal patronage dried up. Earthquakes, whitewashing, and a 1990s military government restoration took their toll before Bagan became a UNESCO site in 2019.
- Excavations at Otein Taung, Pottery Hill, uncovering kendi spouts, pig teeth, and 60 centimeter pipes believed to be medieval toilets
- How the bell-shaped stupa represents Mount Meru and ends in a banana bud apex copied by later Burmese stupas
- Why keystone arches let hollow temples like the Ananda, built in 1105, flex through earthquakes
- The July 1975 quake that dropped the original Bupaya Pagoda into the river and the 2016 quake that damaged nearly 400 temples
- A 200 foot watchtower, a highway, and a golf course in the archaeological zone, and the Zamani Project's LiDAR scans