Pagan (Bagan) Empire unifies Burma

In 1044 Anawrahta becomes king of Pagan, a town on the Irrawaddy River in central Burma. Over the next 33 years he unites the Irrawaddy valley, which was divided among rival Pyu and Mon states, into the first Burmese empire. According to tradition, he took Thaton in 1057, the Mon kingdom in the south, and brought its monks, scriptures and artisans to his capital.¹³

Before this the Burmese court had mixed Buddhist traditions with local spirit worship. Anawrahta, guided by the monk Shin Arahan, turned to Theravada Buddhism, the Pali-language tradition that had been preserved in Sri Lanka since the time of Mahinda and the writing of the Pali Canon. Later Pagan kings, such as Kyanzittha, who built the Ananda Temple, exchanged monks and missions with Sri Lanka. The state was supported by irrigated rice and by gifts of land and labor to monasteries. Kings and nobles built thousands of temples and pagodas, perhaps 10,000 at its height, on the dry Bagan plain, of which over 2,000 survive. Burmese writing, art and the Theravada faith of today's Myanmar grew from this period. Pagan weakened as the Buddhist monasteries gained too much untaxed land, and in the 1280s it was attacked by Mongol armies under Kublai Khan and collapsed. Bagan was listed by UNESCO in 2019.¹²³