Pagan kingdom

21°10′20″N 94°51′37″E / 21.17222°N 94.86028°E / 21.17222; 94.86028 The Pagan kingdom (Burmese: ပုဂံပြည် Băgam pyi [bəɡàɰ̃ kʰɪʔ]; lit. 'Bagan state'), also known as the Pagan dynasty, was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-day Myanmar. Pagan's 250-year rule over the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery laid the foundation for the ascent of Burmese language and culture, the spread of Bamar ethnicity in Upper Myanmar, and the growth of Theravada Buddhism in Myanmar and in mainland Southeast Asia.

The kingdom grew out of a small 9th-century settlement at Pagan (present-day Bagan) by the Mranma people, the predecessor to the modern Bamar ethnicity. Over the next two hundred years, the small principality gradually grew to absorb its surrounding regions until the 1050s and 1060s when King Anawrahta founded the Pagan Empire, presumably for the first time unifying under one polity the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery. By the late 12th century, Anawrahta's successors had extended their influence farther to the south into the upper Malay Peninsula, to the east at least to the Salween River, in the farther north to below the current China border, and to the west, in northern Arakan and the Chin Hills. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Pagan, alongside the Khmer Empire, was one of two main empires in mainland Southeast Asia.

The Burmese language and culture gradually became dominant in the upper Irrawaddy valley, eclipsing the Pyu, Mon and Pali norms by the late 12th century. Theravada Buddhism slowly began to spread to the village level although Vajrayana, Mahayana, Brahmanic, and animist practices remained heavily entrenched at all social strata. Pagan's rulers built over 10,000 Buddhist temples in the Bagan Archaeological Zone of which over 2,000 remain. The wealthy donated tax-free land to religious authorities.

The kingdom went into decline in the mid-13th century as the continuous growth of tax-free religious wealth by the 1280s had severely affected the crown's ability to retain the loyalty of courtiers and military servicemen. This ushered in a vicious circle of internal disorders and external challenges by the Arakanese, Mons, Mongols and Shans. Repeated Mongol invasions (1277–1301) toppled the four-century-old kingdom in 1287. The collapse was followed by 250 years of political fragmentation that lasted well into the 16th century.

The Old Burmese name for the kingdom was simply Arimadanapura. The Burmese name for the kingdom is ပုဂံနေပြည်တော် equivalent to Pagan kingdom in English language.^{[citation needed]}

The origins of the Pagan kingdom have been reconstructed using archaeological evidence as well as the Burmese chronicle tradition. Considerable differences exist between the views of modern scholarship and various chronicle narratives.

The local myths and chronicles written down in the 18th century trace its origins to 167 AD, when Pyusawhti founded the dynasty at Pagan (Bagan). But the 19th-century Glass Palace Chronicle (Hmannan Yazawin) connects the dynasty's origins to the clan of the Buddha and the first Buddhist king Maha Sammata (မဟာ သမ္မတ).

The Glass Palace Chronicle traces the origins of the Pagan kingdom to India during the 9th century BC, more than three centuries before the Buddha was born. Abhiraja (အဘိရာဇာ)of the Sakya clan (သကျ သာကီဝင် မင်းမျိုး) – the clan of the Buddha – left his homeland with followers in 850 BC after military defeat by the neighbouring kingdom of Panchala (ပဉ္စာလရာဇ်). They settled at Tagaung in present-day northern Myanmar and founded a kingdom. The chronicle does not claim that he had arrived in an empty land, only that he was the first king.