This chapter starts with the assumption that Bagan of the 11th through the 14th centuries was a religious hub for monks and pilgrims and constituted one of three important nodes in a Buddhist common world or commonwealth, or what I have elected to call “Buddhist ecumene”. The Buddhist ecumene demarks a common world within which exchanges and interactions between the different nodes shared a religion: Buddhism. Buddhism represents an overarching principle for all the polities which belonged to the same ecumene, but it is by no means the only linking principle. Within this ecumene, ideas, texts and items travelled and were exchanged among the different nodes of the same network that were also connected via commercial trade. Polities waged wars, sometimes on the pretext of religion, but in other times to obtain more people, more resources and to assert supremacy over another. The ecumene refers to a network of centres which is marked by a common shared religion under the “one house” (oikos) of Buddhism.

Bagan represents one of the three key nodes of this Buddhist ecumene. The Buddhist ecumene begins with the reign of Anawrahta, an 11th-century king of Bagan whose exploits are recorded in the Burmese chronicles of the 18th and 19th centuries, the northern Thai chronicle(s) of the 15th century and the Sri Lankan chronicle, Cūlavaṁsa. The Cūlavaṁsa dates from the 13th century but contains updates through the 19th century. The chronicles present the view that Bagan, northern Thailand and Sri Lanka had close interactions with one another, which began as early as the 11th century. These accounts emphasize the king's importance and the position of the kingdom's capital, Bagan, within the context of a regional Buddhist commonwealth or network, characterized by the idea of a Buddhist ecumene (for detailed discussions, see Goh 2007 and 2014).

Chronicle Accounts

Textual accounts of Anawrahta and Bagan characterize the king making great efforts to obtain Buddhist texts and relics. His endeavours to take religious texts and relics to Bagan resulted in the sending of a number of expeditions to foreign countries such as Tarup-China, Sri Lanka and India. According to the textual accounts, most of these missions were carried out without the outbreak of wars.

This book was inspired by a conference in Bagan, sponsored by the Nalanda- Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS, in 2012. Participants in the conference were invited to submit chapters for a book about ancient Bagan's connections with the rest of Asia. This book contains ten chapters, each by a respected expert in early Myanmar history. The publication of this volume marks an important step forward in reintroducing scholarship on Myanmar and Myanmar scholars to the rest of the world. Four of the authors are Myanmarese academics, and one of the three author-editors is of Myanmar ancestry.

The conference sought to gather evidence with which to dispel the myth that Myanmar has always been a hermit kingdom or nation. This book presents abundant evidence that the kingdom of Bagan, which flourished from around 1000 to 1300, played a major role in the development of the economy, religion, art and technology in the area which stretches from India to China.

At the time the conference was conceived, Myanmar was just reestablishing contact with the outside world. The publication of this book demonstrates that Myanmar's growing integration into the international community does not signify a new relationship; Myanmar has more often been a catalyst for development and communication between West Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia than a passive bystander. Buddhism formed one of the major contexts in which Myanmar exerted considerable influence over early Asian civilization. Bagan was also an economic power, and one of Southeast Asia's oldest and largest urban cultures. Myanmar is now resuming its role as an integral part of Asia which it played a thousand years ago.

The editors and authors would like to pay tribute to the late Pamela Gutman, who passed away during the interval between the conference and the publication of this book. She is greatly missed by all scholars with an interest in Myanmar. Her publications will long remain important contributions to the study of this fascinating nation. We would like to dedicate this volume to her memory.

Introduction

Bagan was the capital of a vast kingdom between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Today it is a dusty conglomeration of hundreds of brick temples among which wander a few tourists, horse cart drivers and local farmers who have been forced by the government to move to the fringes of the site, 5km away, in the towns of New Bagan and Nyaung-U. The darkness of the nights is partially relieved by scattered temple lamps sponsored by Buddhist devotees.

For a few nights a year, powerful rhythmic beats of the Burmese saing waing (drum circle orchestra) draw crowds from a temporary marketplace in the forecourt of the Alopyi temple. Tourists are rarely present at these performances. The drums pound out pulsating traditional music for a few hours before the zat pwe begins. Osnes and Gill (2001, 376) described zat pwe as a mixture of classical Thai and Burmese dance and Western ballet. Less than a decade later, another observer defined it differently: an all-night Burmese variety show or vaudeville performance consisting of a potpourri of traditional songs, modern Burmese popular music, classical dance, comedy sketches, plays in traditional verse, modern melodramas (Diamond 2009, 105) and dance drama based on Burmese legends and Jatakas.

The years between 2001 and 2009 form a transitional period in the zat pwe, anyein pwe and other Burmese pwes or performing traditions. Fletcher (2004) provides an introduction to Diamond's description of the modern zat pwe, which contains two plays one modern, the other traditional – each lasting four hours.