Pagan Empire (1044–1287)

Pagan Empire (1044–1287)

Over the next 30 years, Anawrahta founded the Pagan Kingdom, unifying for the first time the regions that would later constitute the modern-day Burma. Anawrahta's successors by the late 12th century had extended their influence farther south into the upper Malay Peninsula, at least to the Salween River in the east, below the current China border in the farther north, and to the west, northern Arakan and the Chin Hills. The Burmese Chronicles claim Pagan's suzerainty over the entire Chao Phraya Valley, and the Thai chronicles include the lower Malay Peninsula down to the Strait of Malacca to Pagan's realm.

By the early 12th century, Pagan had emerged as a major power alongside the Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia, recognised by Song China and the Chola dynasty of India. Well into the mid-13th century, most of mainland Southeast Asia was under some degree of control of either the Pagan Empire or the Khmer Empire.

Anawrahta also implemented a series of key social, religious and economic reforms that would have a lasting impact in Burmese history. His social and religious reforms later developed into the modern-day culture of Burma. The most important development was the introduction of Theravada Buddhism to Upper Burma after Pagan's conquest of the Thaton Kingdom in 1057. Supported by royal patronage, the Buddhist school gradually spread to the village level in the next three centuries although Vajrayana Buddhist, Mahayana, Hindu, and animism remained heavily entrenched at all social strata.

Pagan's economy was primarily based on the Kyaukse agricultural basin northeast of the capital, and Minbu, south of Bagan, where the Bamars had built a large number of new weirs and diversionary canals. It also benefited from external trade through its coastal ports. The wealth of the kingdom was devoted to building over 10,000 Buddhist temples in the Pagan capital zone between 11th and 13th centuries (of which 3000 remain to the present day). The wealthy donated tax-free land to religious authorities.

The Burmese language and culture gradually became dominant in the upper Irrawaddy valley, eclipsing the Pyu and Pali norms by the late 12th century. By then, the Bamar leadership of the kingdom was unquestioned. The Pyu had largely assumed the Bamar ethnicity in Upper Burma. The Burmese language, once an alien tongue, was now the lingua franca of the kingdom.

The kingdom went into decline in the 13th century as the continuous growth of tax-free religious wealth—by the 1280s, two-thirds of Upper Burma's cultivable land had been alienated to the religion—affected the crown's ability to retain the loyalty of courtiers and military servicemen. This ushered in a vicious circle of internal disorders and external challenges by Mons, Mongols and Shans.

Beginning in the early 13th century, the Shan began to encircle the Pagan Empire from the north and the east. The Mongols, who had conquered Yunnan, the former homeland of the Bamar, in 1253, began their invasion in 1277, and in 1287 sacked Pagan, ending the Pagan Kingdom's 250-year rule of the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery. Pagan's rule of central Burma came to an end ten years later in 1297 when it was toppled by the Myinsaing Kingdom.

After the fall of Pagan, the Mongols left the searing Irrawaddy valley but the Pagan Kingdom was irreparably broken up into several small kingdoms. By the mid-14th century, the country had become organised along four major power centres: Upper Burma, Lower Burma, Shan States and Arakan. Many of the power centres were themselves made up of (often loosely held) minor kingdoms or princely states. This era was marked by a series of wars and switching alliances. Smaller kingdoms played a precarious game of paying allegiance to more powerful states, sometimes simultaneously.