| Owing to the lack of reliable records, very little is know about Myanmar’s early history. Legends relate that a king of the Mons, a people who had apparently migrated into Lower Myanmar from the Southeast, built the Shwedagon Pagoda on the Site of modern Rangoon during the lifetime of the Buddha (6th Century BC).
Another legend, that the 3rd Century BC Indian
Emperor Ashoka (or Asoka), a devout Buddhist, Sent monks to
Thaton, a Mon Settlement in Lower Burma on the Gulf of Martaban,
Suggest that they had early centacts with the Indian
subcontinent by sea. Indian ships docked at Thaton,Pegu (now
Bago), and other Lower Burma ports, and the region became an
outpost of Indian Civilisation. India’s chief contribution to
Myanmar Culfure was Buddhism, and over life and national
identity revolved.
Chinese records from the 3rd
Century AD mention a people known as the Pyu who lived in the
central Ayeyarwaddy River area of Upper Burma, having apparently
migrated into the region from the Tibetan Plateau. Chinese
Buddhist pilgrims of the 7th Century AD describe a
Pyu City state, known as Sriksetra (the ‘Pleasant’ or ‘Fortunate
Field’), near the modern town of Prome on the Banks of the
Ayeyarwaddy. Sriksetra consisted of over 100 monasteries and
its finest monument Still in existence today is the 200ft high
Bawbawgyi Pagoda, Constructed of brick in India Style. According
to Burmese chronicles, the Pyu gained Supremacy over the Mons,
Sent Shipsto India, Ceylon (Srilanka), the Malay Penisula and
Indonesia and claimed tributaries as far afield as Sumatra and
Java. According to records, the Pyu Kingdom Came to an end in AD
832.
Another group of states was established as early as the 4th
Century AD in what is now Arakan State, on the Bay of Bengal.
The Arakanese were related to the Burmans of Upper Burma and,
because of their location on the coast, had close sea links with
India.
The Burmans, a people akin to the Pyu,
founded settlements at Bagan on the banks of Ayeyarwaddy River
in Upper Burma as early as the 2nd Century AD (the
first known date for the establishment of Bagan is AD 849).
Strategically located on the north-south and east-west trade
routes and close to the irrigated plain of Kyaukse, which
produced an sbundance of rice, Bagan provided on economic base
upon which a mighty kingdom was to evolve. |
