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DECEMBER, 1993.)
NOTES ON ANTIQUITIES IN RAMANNADESA.
347
back. The great sample of the elongated style is the Shwêdagûn at Rangoon, which ist. historically known to have been continually enlarged (i. e., to consist of a series of pagodas built over smaller ones), from the days of Binyàwarů (1446-1450 A. D.) and Queen Shinsòbû (1453-1460 A. D.) of Pegu to those of S'inbyûyin (1763-1775 A. D.) of the Alompra Dynasty, under which last ruler it finally attained its present shape and height in 1768 A. D.
I hope in due course to return to this important subject later on and to examine the pagoda forms of Burma in detail.
10. The Shwefayaung at Pegu. The enormous recumbent figure of Gautama Buddha, the Shwefayaung, as it is called (see Plate XVII.), in the Zainganaing Quarter of Pegy, has been noted by Mr. Taw Sein Ko (ante, Vol. XXI. p. 384). This evidently was one of the sights in days gone by of a part of the town that was set apart for the priests, for the Kalyani Dêng is not far distant, the forgotten pagoda with its huge tank in Mr. Jackson's Garden (ante, p. 340) is close by, and the Mahîchêti Pagoda is not far off. It had an enclosure of its own surrounded by & wall. It is now a very prominent object of red brick on a platform of squared laterite blocks, but the restorers have begun on it and plastered the face already, and no doubt the efforts of the pions. will, in time, result in the plastering of the whole body. To the antiquarian it is remarkable for having a lost history. It is probably about 400 years old, and yet there is no history at all attached to it! What story there is about it is in fact an example of the utter extinction that at times overtakes an Oriental deltaic town upon conquest. Pega was taken by Alaangp'aya in 1757 A. D., and utterly destroyed for a generation. So completely were the inhabitante dispersed that, when the city was repopulated under S'inbyuyin, who conciliated the Talaings, about 20 years after its destruction, all remembrance of this image, 181 ft. long and 48 ft. high at the shoulder, had disappeared! And this, though it was within & mile of the new town and surrounded by monasteries! The place on which it was situated had become dense jungle, and the image itself turned into what appeared to be a jungle-covered hillock, or at best a tree-hidden ruin. In 1881 the Burma State Railway ran past Pego, within half a mile of the image, and laterite was required for the permanent way. A local contractor, in searching for laterite in the neighbourhood, came across a quantity in the jungle, and on clearing the place uncovered the image, which has ever since been an object of veneration,
A similar complete depopulation seems to have been effected at Bassein about 1760 A. D. by Alaungp'ayâ, for the British Burma Gazetteer accounts for the absence of native histories of Bassein by the utter destruction of the town that then took place.
11. Some details of the Plates.
Plate 1. The small figures in part of a circle at the top of the drawing represent the Sangha, or Church, seated round the Buddha, who is not visible in the plate. I have a curious brown glased brick from Wunbo, which shews four figures seated in a tasaung or sayát. It is inscribed with the words, in clear Barmese characters, “Tatiya Sanghúyanátar han," which in Burmese would be read Tatiya Ding'áyanátin hàn, and may be translated, "the picture of the Third Convocation hearing the precepts of the Buddha:" Yaná, to the modern Burman, is one of the early convocations of the Buddhist Church rehearsing the teachings of the Buddha: yanátin is the holding of such a convocation : hàn means “having the appearance of." It is not a verb.70
A careful comparison of the figures shewn in this Plate with those described in the next will shew that the figures of the Farm Cave are identical with those of the Kogun Cave in point of age and character.
See ante, p. 18. There is a recumbent Buddha at Pechaburi in fiam 145 ft. long; so Bowring's Biam, I. 167 and one in Bangkok, 166 ft. long, op. cit., I. 418.
• This Third Convocation is a great landmark in Burmese ecclesiastical history. The Burmans mean by it A Göka's Third Council, which, according to them, was held in the Year of Religion 285.986307 B. C. Also, ancord. ing to them, it was as a result of this Convocation that they adopted the Buddhist faith. See Bigapdet, Life and Legend of Gaudama, II. 139: ante, p. 16.
