Beikthano
transliterated from “Vishnu” the Preserver, the second of the Hindu triad, is
the oldest of the 3 ancient Centres of
Pyu Civilization.
Chronologically Beikthano
flourished during the 1st
to 5th
centuries CE, the second being Thayekhittayar (Srikestra)
now called Hmawzar which lasted from the 5th
Century to the 7th
Centugy. Hanlin, the
last Pyu Kingdom was located farther north in the
Shwebo District of Sagaing
Division and was most probably the Pyu Kingdom
that the Chinese chroniclers described in their dealings with the “Piao”
and records of delegations from the Pyu kingdom to
the Chinese court in 801-802. At any rate, Halin
was sacked and burned in 832 by the Nanchao
Kingdom from the north.
Beikthano
city is located 12 miles west of Taungdwingyi
Township, Magway Division on the
Taungdwingyi-Magway Highway. Its co-ordinates are
latitude (20°) North and (95° / 23’) East and is built on ground 450 feet
above sea level.
The ancient city of Beikthano
covered an area of 3.3 square miles. The eastern city wall was 10,000 feet in
length, the northern wall was 9,000 feet, the southern wall was 8,000 feet,
while the western wall has collapsed owing to soil erosion caused by the
action of the Yanpè Creek.
Beikthano
was defended by two walls, a City wall and an inner Palace Wall. Both of these
walls were more circular (or rather rhomboid) than square in
shape.Huge, specially shaped bricks had to be
baked to be fitted as proper corner stones for these walls.
Neither the City walls nor the Palace Walls were defended by
moats. The majority of the Pyu citizenry lived
outside the city walls or in the surrounding countryside.
They were content to live in houses made of wood and bamboo but
insisted on their monasteries being built of wood and brick and their city and
Palace also achieving corresponding grandeur.
An account of Beikthano was
recorded in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) Chinese chronicle Man
Shu in the chapter “The Southern Barbarians as
follows:
“The
circular wall of his (the Pyu King’s) city is
built of greenish glazed titles (brick) and is 160 li.
It has 12 gates and three pagodas at each four corners. . . Their house tiles
are of lead and zinc. . . They have a hundred monasteries with bricks of
vitreous ware, embellished with gold and silver, vermillion, gray
colours and red kino.”
[Taw Sein Kho (1895),
The Pottery and Glasware of Burma
1894-95”,Superintendent of Govt.Printing,
Rangoon.]
The usual dates ascribed to the Beikthano
kingdom are from the 1st
Century CE to the 5th
Century CE when the city gates and the Palace Walls were burned to the ground.
Charcoal from the excavated sites have been radio carbon-dated
to the 1st
century C.E. Conflicting scientific evidence however emerged at the 5th
Radio Dating Conference (1962) of the International Dating Conference,
Cambridge University, U.K., where the decay of Radio carbon (14) from samples
from Beikthano indicate that they should be more
properly dated to 1950 B.C.E., i.e. to nearly 2000 years earlier than the
First Century C.E.
The charcoal samples for these analyses were taken from the two
lowest strata of a religious edifice unearthed at site No.(9) as well as
charcoal from the two bottom strata at site No.(10).
Religious Beliefs
One mystery surrounding Pyu
religious beliefs is that although they built hundreds of monasteries and were
Buddhist attested by contemporary Chinese chronicles, there is a surprising
dearth of Buddhist artifacts in all three Pyu
Kingdoms.
This has led to conjectures that the Pyu
received their Buddhism from Andra Pradesh in
Southern India. The excavations have uncovered artifacts that are related to
those found in Andra Pradesh, with dates
corresponding to the periods in which most of the Andra
Buddhist material at Amaravati and
Nagarjunakone was made ( i.e. during the second to
fourth centuries.)
As Prof. R.L.Brown, Professor of
Indian and Southeast Asian Art History at the University of California at Los
Angeles succinctly puts it:
“Another problem is that no Buddhist
artefacts have been found at Beikthano. One
suggestion is that this mysterious absence is due to
Andran Buddhist influence predating the adoption of iconic
representations of the Buddha and thus represents the
aniconic period at Amaravati (before the
end of the second century.)[ Brown. R.L. Pyu Art,
Looking East and West”]. U Aung Thaw offers a
similar suggestion that the Buddhist sect at Beikthano
rejected the worship of the Buddha image. [U Aung
Thaw, Reports on the Excavations at Beikthano,
Rangoon, 1968. p.66]
Hanlin
in Upper Myanmar resembles the two other Pyu sites
in having no Buddhist artefacts either.
Pyu
Culture
Beikthano
city and its environs reflect the culture of the Pyus.
The populace cremated their dead and buried the ash in funeral urns or jars
outside or even within their dwellings.
They
appear to have gained considerable expertise in the making of burial urns.
Over 700 such urns have been uncovered together with 45 intact covers and show
the influence of many decorative styles.
They were also accomplished masons, being able to construct
brick walls and edifices that have lasted to the present day. The insides of
some buildings have been artistically decorated with stucco figurines,
lime-wash and paintings.
The craft of blacksmithing seems to have been also developed
as evidenced by the iron-work on the City Gates, hinges and decorative scroll
work and the production of iron weapons such as swords, spear-heads,
arrow-heads and bows.
The Pyus also seem to have been
adept at pottery making, judging from the 2060 pots and jars uncovered
comprising pots for water carrying, jars for water storage, and cooking pots.
The gate to the city wall at dig No.8 has also revealed a twice
life-sized marble figure presumed to represent a Nat (Animistic) Spirit
Guardian of the City indicating that Pyus were
also accomplished sculptors in marble.
A small paper-thin exquisite gold cup and two similar silver
cups that have been excavated bear witness that
goldsmithy and silversmithy too were well
developed among the Pyus.
Skeletal Remains
When one of the religious edifices (Dig. No. 14) was excavated
a stretched out skeleton near the south wall was uncovered. Along the north
wall were lined up two piles of human bones. The outstretched skeleton remains
were carefully marked, labeled and shipped to Prof. Dr. H.
Zaw Htun of the
Faculty of Anatomy, Institute of Medicine, Yangon for scientific examination.
Dr. Zaw Htun’s
findings indicated that the remains were of a healthy Mongolian male, 25 years
old and 5’ 5” tall. The cause of death was due to a heavy blow delivered to
the right temple.
Beads
A total of 780 beads, comprising large numbers of earthenware
beads and (29) stone beads were recovered from the excavations. At building
No. (17) alone 500 beads were found and possibly indicates that the building
was some sort of bead factory. Some of the stone beads were
coloured either red or yellow or black. The art of
colouring stone beads seems to have reached an
unprecedented high during the Pyu period.
Conclusion
Beikthano
was destroyed in the 4th
or 5th
Century C.E. Buildings and city gates were consumed by fire, indicating that
it was the result of enemy attack. After a short period as a ruined city, it
was rebuilt again as a succeeding kingdom, only to be sacked again and burnt
to the ground. However the Pyu people continued to
occupy the surrounding countryside in spite their no longer having city-walls
and a Palace to protect them.
The next Pyu kingdom was
established down-river at Thayekhittara (Sri
Kshestra), 5 miles west of
Pyay that grew to prominence during the 4th
and 5th
Centuries CE.