Buddha's life in Konbaung period bronzes from Yazagyo

This is a study of a collection of narrative bronzes retrieved from a cluster of ruins (see figure 1) at Yazagyo, in the Kabaw Valley, in a remote area of Northwestern Myanmar/Burma. The valley lies between the Upper Chindwin River and the hills which separate Burma from Manipur. Yazagyo is on a side road from the Myanmar-India Friendship Highway, 35 kilometres north of Kalaymyo. It was formerly protected by several kilometres of earth banks and moats, surmounted by a stockade. The bronzes come from a total of six ruined buildings, five of which have since been demolished.

The Yazagyo collection (see figure 2) is kept at the Minkyaung (royal monastery). Figures in this distinctive style, generally posed on rectangular open-frame bases and representing events in Buddha's life, are a near-ubiquitous feature of reliquary deposits of the 1752–1885 Konbaung Period.¹ The ruins also yielded oval silver boxes filled with small fragments of an uncertain substance which are now preserved in fragrant oil. They are believed to be significant religious relics. Two silver scrolls inscribed with the opening paragraphs of the Vinaya were found. One of these was dated 1883 (see figure 3).

Figure 1.

One of the ruined pagodas near the Min-kyaung monastery.

The enshrinement of relics

A relic chamber² is a cavity in a pagoda, sometimes topped with a stone lid. Pagodas may have several such chambers. The earliest relic chamber in Burma to survive relatively intact into modern times was underneath the Khin Ba mound, a 7th–8th century CE ruin excavated in the 1920s just inside the southeast wall of the Pyu city of Sri Ksetra. Two stone covers were found in the mound, indicating that the structure may at some time have held two relic chambers, or that a single chamber may have been re-used. Contents of the brick chamber included a silver reliquary with Buddha images in high relief inscribed with the names of the four Buddhas of the present world cycle,³ silver stupas and models of trees, several dozen Buddha images mostly in dhyana-mudra, embossed dvarapalas, gold leaves bearing scriptural extracts in Pali, coins, beads and gemstones (ASI 1927: 171–181; Stargardt 2001).

Figure 2.

The contents of the relic chambers.

At Bagan, Buddha images and votaries have been recovered from ruined buildings, but there is no record of a relic chamber surviving with its contents intact. This may be due either to pillaging through the centuries (Than Tun 1996) or to the recycling of enshrined materials. Buddhists across Southeast Asia, praying that their donations would last for thousands of years, have at times enshrined remarkably large quantities of religious materials. In CE 1480, more than 16,000 images of Buddha were enshrined in a single building at Phichit, in Thailand (Woodward 1997: 21). Unlike wall paintings in temples or Jataka plaques on the exterior walls of pagodas such as those seen at Bagan, the contents of relic chambers were not meant to be viewed, except on the occasion of their enshrinement. The insertion of relics related to Buddha or Buddhism (the latter might be in the form of scriptural excerpts, for example) consecrates a building. In the Burmese context, it is now a phaya or holy thing. The same term is used for a Buddha image.

Figure 3.

Reading the 1883 silver scroll.

Reliquary contents represent a single dedicatory event. While the event may be datable, some of the contents may be the result of redeposition. When devotees in the past have recovered objects from a ruin they have generally proceeded to re-enshrine them. Today, this does not necessarily mean the objects will disappear from view. The Botataung pagoda in Yangon, bombed in World War II, was rebuilt in concrete with an internal corridor after its concealed relic chamber was excavated (Ohn Ghine 1953). Its relics and various donated...