Travel Day 1143 – Bagan, MYANMAR
While the red brick temples in the green fields of Bagan were an absolutely fascinating sight, the interior of the temples was interesting as well…
Buddha Statue framed by Guardians in Bagan, Myanmar
During our first day in Bagan we had already learned that the temples were actually all hollow structures, in various states of repair and open to the public. The biggest and most famous temples were obviously in best condition while the smaller ones in the fields sometime seemed abandoned and forgotten. But no matter how far away the temple was and no matter how forgotten it seemed, it always had a well attended and repaired statue of the Buddha…
Actually the smallest temples had just one Buddha statue, sometimes framed by guardians, while the slightly bigger temples had at least four Buddhas to show for. In general it seemed to be a common scenario that each temple had a vaulted entrance hall, giving way to the Buddha statues in the raised part of the main structure underneath the tower like pointy roof. This main part of the temple was usually square in plan and it contained a square interior column carrying the weight of the roof structure…
Square Column with Buddha Statues in Bagan, Myanmar
This interior column was in turn providing the back support for the usually four sitting Buddha statues and leaving just enough space for a person to walk around and even sit in front of the Buddhas. While ideally those four Buddha statues would have faced each cardinal direction, in reality this didn’t prove to be the case as all the temples seemed to stand in slight angles towards each other when observed from an elevated point of view…
The hierarchy of temples appeared to be in the order that the next bigger temples had a second storey with one single Buddha, while the even bigger ones continued with the theme and hosted another square column with additional four Buddhas. This continued all the way to the biggest temples that seemed to have a solid core with pathways leading around it and multiple niches providing a home to even several storey high standing Buddha statues…
Bigger Bagan Temple with standing Buddha Statue in Myanmar
It was actually all quite interesting to see, even if the biggest temple around, Dhammayangyi Patho, seemed out of scale and disproportional. At the same time it left many unanswered questions as to if its solid core was actually really solid or if it was just enclosing something that was not meant to be seen by every visitor. Since funding for a serious investigation and restoration project seemed to be problematic, the interior of the biggest of all the many Bagan temples still remained a mystery…
For me personally, the biggest temples which were also the most frequented ones by tourists, were not so interesting. I rather focused on the forgotten temples in the fields and explored their quiet and peaceful interior Buddha quartet. It was sometimes even nice to sit down in front of a Buddha and enjoy the silence. Yeah, these temples were really something special…
Find all Bagan Photos here.
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