Special post--Alaungsithu Su Taung--translated by Gordon H. Luce.

What driving energy could have produced this vast, richly adorned city? And why did the ancient kings build pagodas and monasteries rather than stone palaces? As Professor Kyaw Thet suggests, the economic basis of this high civilization was an extensive irrigation system. But its deeper stimulus, as we learn from the temple inscriptions, was the Buddhist faith. Not content with worldly success and victories in battle, each of the kings tried to outdo his forebears in raising shrines which would glorify the Lord Buddha and in so doing insure his own spiritual progress in later rebirths. Thus, in an inscription in the Shwegu Temple, we find this beautiful prayer, written in Pali verse, by King Alaungsithu (1112-1167):

By this my gift, whatever boon I seek,

It is the best of boons to profit all;

By this abundant merit I desire

Here or hereafter no angelic pomp

Of Brahmas, Suras, Maras; nor the state

And splendors of a monarch; nay, not even

To be the pupil of a conqueror.

But I would build a causeway sheer athwart

The river of Samsara, and all folk

Would speed across thereby until they reach

The Blessed City. I myself would cross,

And drag the drowning over. Aye, myself

Tamed, I would tame the willful; comforted,

Comfort the timid; wakened, wake the asleep;

Cool, cool the burning; freed, set free the bound.

And Alaungsithu’s predecessor, the conqueror and builder Kyanzittha (1084-1112), inscribed his edicts on massive pillars in this vein:

O King of Devas, hear thou! . . . The sage Bisnu shall become the king Kyanzittha, and he shall uphold the religion of the Lord Buddha . . . . All vice, which is as a stench, shall the king utterly blot out with true morality, which is as a perfume. . . . The tears of those who have lost their friends shall the king wipe away with the hand of loving-kindness. . . With his right hand shall the king give boiled rice and bread to all the people, and with his left hand ornaments and wearing apparel to all men. . . .He shall soften the hearts of those who intend evil, and exhort those who speak evil to speak good. . . .

The spirit, of these utterances is all the more remarkable when we consider that only a hundred years before the religion of Pagan had been in the hands of the debased Ari priests who had corrupted the Buddhism brought from Tibet with magical tricks, snake worship, and lewd Tantric rites. Two men accomplished this striking reformation: Kyanzittha’s father, Anawrahta, and the evangelical monk Shin Arahan, who attracted the king by his holiness and became his chief adviser.

Thawka—The Atlantic,1958.

End quote.