Golden Myanmar

considerable antiquity, even in the art of later times. And many Myanmar of the present day are as devoted to the worship of the Nats to astrology and even to alchemy, as they are to the doctrines of the Buddha.

Myanmar lies close to India, and during the early Middle Age India was a land of enterprise, sending out her merchants and colonists to many parts of Southeast Asia. Myanmar received his own groups of Indian settlers at that time and later pushed by the British colonialists..  

Brahmin astrologers are know to have been in the service of medieval kings in both Prome and Bagan. And although Hindu images dating from the sixth to tenth centuries AD have been found, Hinduism never establish itself firmly in Myanmar

Documentation of the early history of Myanmar is scant. Much of Myanmar history is fanciful, for genuine history was not a Burmese forte.

Chinese sources refer to wild, tattooed and cannibal tribes -see Chin-  using bows and arrows. Ptolemy's Geographica identifies a coastline, possibly around Moulmein, where cannibals lived.

To the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries AD probably belong inscriptions from Prome and Old Prome which refer to kings with Indian names, some of whom may have been connected .

ornament and flame hood-antefixes are much emphasized and enlarged. This – the Myanmar style, as distinct from the Mon – tends to stress the height. of the walls with its highly ornamented pilasters. Porches may be crowned not only with hoods, but even with tiered pinnacles, as in the Sembyoku. One temple at least – the Obelisk of Wet-kyi-in, Ku-byauk-ki – was built as a direct imitation of the square, straight-sided pyramid-tower of the great temple at Bodhgaya, called the Mahabodhi. This had been restored by Anawrahta's successor, Kyanzittha, in the early twelfth century. The Myanmar version has little roundels, each containing a relief figure of a celestial, on each of the many partitions on the faces of the tower.

Myanmar figurative art shows the Buddha as a golden or white icon, in a blandly attractive person, unmarked by his asceticism or suffering; the image is meant to show his spiritual not his physical nature. Buddha images, which can be miniature or colossal, are generalized. It is part of their function to display absence of 'personality' and individualism, and they are thus monotonous. It has been described how Buddhists believe that all Buddha images, if they are to have any effective virtue or magical power, must be careful copies of the earliest images. Buddha images in Myanmar, which is a conservative Theravada country, are therefore made according to a systematic proportional scheme which the craftsmen have handed down for centuries. At the same time it is believed that to make, or to pay for the making of a new Buddha image is a virtuous act, helping the donor on the way to enlightenment by creating merit for him. Thus there has always been an incentive in Myanmar, as in Siam, for people to multiply identical Buddha images in all sorts of materials, not because they were needed, but because it was a good thing to do for its own sake. At its lowest, this belief has led people to go to temples and spend an hour or two stamping out clay Buddha's with a metal stamp. This custom was no less prevalent in Myanmar than in Siam, and temples often have rooms containing thousands of this kind of Buddha.

Buddha image

There are only three principal iconic positions in which the Buddha appears in Myanmar art. The first is in the 'earth-touching' attitude. The Buddha sits cross-legged, his body upright, his left hand is laid palm up in his lap, his right hand stretched forward over his right knee so that the tips of the fingers touch the ground. This refers to the moment of the Buddha's enlightenment, when he called the earth itself to witness that he was entitled, by the virtue he had accumulated over the ages, to the supreme insight. The second shows the Buddha standing with his right hand raised in the gesture of protection, his left held down, palm out, giving blessings. The third principal icon of the Buddha represents him lying on his right side, his cheek resting on his right hand, in the act of dying into Nirvana.

The rest of the Buddhist representational iconography of Myanmar is based mainly on stories dealing with the life of the Buddha, and with his lives in earlier incarnations. Characteristically, these stories are all represented as relief's or paintings in an abbreviated form, containing only the principal figures, and without any expressive or dramatic interest at all. They serve only as schematic reminders of stories that everyone knows, and do not have to tell the story. Sometimes the representations contain figures of the celestials, who are often mentioned in Buddhist texts as listening to the Buddha's sermons, or attending him. Myanmar art always represents them as delicate, elegant creatures, garlanded with scarves. Certainly these Indian celestials were conceived by the Myanmar in the image of their Nats.

Figurative sculpture as represented in the colossal Buddha images enshrined in the temples of Myanmar or Burma, has never been a highly successful art form in Myanmar. The oldest images at Bagan were often built of brick and finished in stucco. Many huge modern images are made in the same way. The technique is not a flexible one, and the Myanmar had no particular incentive to develop expression in the figures. They remain faithful and monotonous centerpieces for the devotions of the Buddhist faithful. They were heavily and repeatedly gilded, since paying for the application of gilding to an image was always held to be a meritorious act. This sort of pious gilding always obscured the aesthetic qualities of an image. Along the borders of the robe an inlay of precious or semi-precious stones was often set, again as a testimony to the piety of a donor. Just as it is impossible to study the evolution of the architecture of living temples, so it is not possible to compose a stylistic sequence for large Myanmar images which have been continuously reworked. No research has been done in the field, and it is not likely that there would be much concrete result if it were.

In the case of smaller images, of bronze, stone or wood in Myanmar or Burma, dating is also difficult; there is no means as yet of distinguishing the work of different localities and of different times, and no inscriptions with dates are available. The most that can be done is to offer a tentative identification of certain images with an older, up-country provenance. It is possible that they contain vestiges of Pyu style, and certainly some overtones of Chinese form. They tend to be mounted on high lotus plinths, and to wear modeled crowns whose panels are very tall and pointed, as are the tall flame-like protuberances of the skull. From the shoulders there often rise high flanges, fretted and flamboyant. The modeling of the body and face is restrained, but it has more of the old sense of Indian volume to the limbs than the orthodox Myanmar type of Buddha.

There are traces of Khmer-Thai style in many Myanmar images because after the Mongols broke Myanmar power in 1287, these neighbors of the Myanmar took over much erstwhile Myanmar territory, and maintained continuous contact with the sources of Theravada Buddhism in Ceylon through Lower Myanmar. The orthodox Myanmar Buddha image is thus characterized by a bland horizontal emphasis in the features of the mask; but the forms of the body are suppressed into indeterminate volumes beneath the tent-like forms of the robe. The robe's pleats follow a simple, fan-like pattern; and end-folds appear sometimes developed into a fish-tail pattern. Extremely undemonstrative reticence, and no attempt at the expression of qualities, mark the hundreds of orthodox Buddhas in bronze, wood and white marble.

In a few of the temples of Bagan Myanmar there survive relief sculptures in painted terracotta and frescoes that give some idea of tEe original splendor of the buildings. The style is markedly eastern Indian, very close indeed to Pala art in Biher and Bengal. Relief from the Ananda temple confine themselves to a few clearly silhouetted figures and objects disposed on the ground, scarcely developed sculpturally beyond their mere outlines. The most interesting work, however, is the brilliantly colored fresco-painting in, for example, the Abeyadana an id the Wet-kyi-in, Ky-byauk-kyi. Frescoes in the Abeyadana represent a whole Tantric series of divine principles ranged above each other on arcades. There are flying celestials in the fine slim-bodied sinuous style which provided the unvarying; basis for the whole later art of Myanmar. And here and there individual figures testify to a quality of invention that is no whit inferior to the Indian prototypes. Indeed it is possible that Indian Buddhist painters, at first willing immigrants, but later those expelled from their own country by the Moslem holocaust, actually painted some of the walls at Bagan.

The course followed by the later evolution of Myanmar styles of relief and painting was always governed by a tendency towards schematic simplification. There is in Theravada Buddhism a strong streak of puritanism towards the arts. Artistic expression is regarded as an indulgence flattering to the senses. It can only be tolerated if it is purged of all reference to actuality and converted into a kind of mnemonic diagram. Bright simple colors – red, yellow, green and gold – and generalized floral decoration are admitted only because they attract the simple mind, and give it an impetus towards the truth contained in the legend. The idea of developing a visual language for expressing Buddhist ideas, and exploring its resources as was done in Mahayana countries was absolutely excluded in Myanmar.

The later sculptures of auxiliary figures from Buddhist mythology occasionally, makes a more substantial attempt at aesthetic expression. For example, there are figures representing Buddhist saints who are supposed to be listening to the sermons of the Buddha, sometimes placed in a reverent attitude before the main image in a shrine or hall. Most commonly they are of wood, gilded, and with stone or glass inlaid ornament along the borders of their robes. Their figures, features and shaven heads are far more typical of the Myanmar people than the stereotyped Buddha images, and there is some correspondence with visual actuality. Their expression is bland, elegant and sweet, with all emotion exiled. But the forms of which they are composed are usually hesitant, undifferentiated, and made without any conceptual firmness or certainty.

The teakwood figures of the Nats in Myanmar or Burma, mentioned earlier, of which there is a set of copies in Oxford, belong to the same order of art as the temple furniture. They are carved in the same manner and technique. Many of the wooden halls contain brackets or panels carved with elegant figures representing the inhabitants of the heavens. Their attitudes and ornaments are based on those of the palace dancers. They wear the usual insignia of immortals – upward-pointed epaulettes, and tall, pagoda-like pointed hats, often adorned with flamboyant cartouches. The Nats are carved more or less in the full-round, without the tension of form that is produced by the more demanding sculptural modes evolved in other countries of Southeast Asia. Some ride on their canonical animal vehicles, elephants or horses, and they hold weapons or make characteristic gestures by means of which they can be identified.

One of the most important types of Myanmar temple and monastery furniture, examples of which are found in some Western museums, are large, gilded sutra-chests, ornamented with relief in gesso. Such chests were used to store the manuscripts of the sacred Buddhist texts possessed by every monastery. Since these texts contained, as it were, the essence of Buddhism, the spiritual life-blood of the monastery, the chests in which they were kept had to be worthy receptacles, and they shared something of the reverence accorded the texts. The gilt and ornament are the visible evidence of this reverence. The chests stood backed against the walls in the library halls, and were subsidiary foci of the decorative scheme.

Their ornament is in very flat relief - true two-plane relief and for this very reason - the strictness of the limitations of the medium - much of this relief ornament is the most aesthetically satisfying work produced by the Myanmar sculptor. The top of the chest is usually plain gilt, and the back, which is not normally seen, is the same. The chest may be supported on a gilt molded stand, perhaps with feet. Old chests were often given new stands, as it seems that their old stands often decayed, or suffered damage. The front face of the chest bears stylized representations of scenes from the life of the Buddha. Large areas of mirror may be set into the gesso to represent a lake, or the body of an ornamental chariot. The figures are few in number, laid out schematically over the surface; they tend to follow the horizontal and vertical directions, thus giving an air of repose and calm to the design. The side faces usually show figures of celestials bearing their 'insignia', in ornamental frames.

Another kind of temple furniture in which the Myanmar excelled was lacquer ware. Today domestic rice bowls, either for use at home, or, more elaborate, for sale abroad, are made by stiffening a basis of fiber - often hair - with clay and lacquer-juice. They may have gilt figures or ornament on a ground of black lacquer. But the more elaborate temple 'lacquers' may be very large indeed, often compounded of as many as twenty separately formed pieces. Usually they are of red lacquer, and most have black figures and